Once again, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has made another major promise to his supporters after vowing to ban transgender athletes from competing in collegiate-level sports in the state.
According to the NY Post, Abbott made the promise during his address at a recent meeting of young conservatives in Dallas.
“This next session, we will pass a law prohibiting biological men to compete against women in college sports,” Abbott said.
The announcement from Abbott follows changes he led made to Texas state legislation in 2021 which bans transgender students in public schools, kindergarten through high school, from competing in sports. Two lawmakers in the Lone Star state are reportedly gearing up to file a bill targeting universities that will outlaw trans women from competing against biological women in college sports.
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Abbott purportedly addressed trans athlete, and University of Pennsylvania swimmer Lia Thomas, 22, who won two swimming titles in February 2022 during the Ivy League championships, with his remarks.
“We’ve fought for the rights of women to be able to succeed in this world only to have that now superseded by this ideology that men are going to be empowered to compete against women,” Abbott said.
Thomas, who is originally from Texas and competed for three years at Penn as a man named Will Thomas, sparked a national debate after shattering two separate freestyle records at a meet against Princeton and Cornell in 2021. While Thomas last competed as a man in 2019, the same year she began Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) designed to lower testosterone levels, she was able to rejoin the women’s swim team in 2021 after taking a year off.
According to a change made to NCAA rules in 2022 in support of trans athletes, trans competitors need at least one year of testosterone suppression treatment in order to be eligible to compete as a woman. A separate rule also leaves the status of eligibility to each individual sport.
However, despite existing NCAA regulations in her favor, Thomas ultimately did not have the support of the women’s swim team as sixteen of her teammates said she should be barred from competition due to her “unfair biological advantage.”
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Abbott’s plans for banning trans athletes from competing in the state of Texas are actually already similarly in place in 17 other states across the U.S. In 2021, Florida passed a law closely resembling Abbott’s proposed bill called the Fairness in Women’s Sports Act that banned individuals who were biologically born as male from competing against women in sports at public school and college levels.
Florida’s legislation also requires student-athletes to submit a birth certificate with documentation of their sex at birth when signing up for a team. While several lawsuits have transpired since the law was enacted, it is currently still in place in the Sunshine state.
Check out the clip of Gov. Abbott’s remarks about the proposed ban on trans athletes in college sports below.