With polls showing Americans overwhelmingly support protecting girls sports from male athletes, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act of 2025 with the unanimous backing of the GOP. And the nearly unanimous opposition of Democrats, including the three representing the Delaware Valley.
According to GOP supporters, the bill establishes clear definitions for sports participation based on biological sex at birth and prohibits federal funding for schools or athletic programs that allow biological males to compete in female categories. It passed 2018 to 206 with just two Democrats voting yes, and one voting present.
Reps. Madeleine Dean, Mary Gay Scanlon, and Chrissy Houlahan were all no votes. They also voted against it when it came to the House floor last April.
The Democratic Party’s extreme stance on transgender issues — including Vice President Kamala Harris’ support for taxpayer-funded sex change surgery for illegal immigrants in prison — is widely believed to have contributed to President-elect Donald Trump’s victory and the GOP’s overall success in last November’s election.
“Democrats will not soon forget the punchline in anti-transgender Trump ads that became ubiquitous by Election Day,” the AP reported. “’Kamala is for they/them; President Trump is for you.’”
“Week by week when that ad hit and stuck and we didn’t respond, I think that was the beginning of the end,” former Democratic Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell said of the Democrats’ defeat.
And after narrowly holding his seat in November’s election, incumbent Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-N.Y.) said his party has a problem.
“I don’t want to discriminate against anybody, but I don’t think biological boys should be playing in girls’ sports,” he said just days after the election, adding: “Democrats should be saying this.”
Parents across the U.S., as well as in Pennsylvania, have shown up at school board meetings to oppose allowing biological males to compete against their daughters, some fearing for their safety. And there have been high-profile cases of girls injured by male athletes while competing in high school sports.
And 69 percent of Americans told Gallup last year that “transgender athletes should only be allowed to compete on sports teams that conform with their birth gender.”
As a result, half of all states have passed legislation protecting girls sports from biological male athletes.
But Delaware Valley Democrats stand by their opposition to the ban.
Scanlon said the bill “discriminates against transgender and intersex children as young as 4, banning them from participating in school sports with their friends, and creating a system likely to lead to invasive examinations of youngsters in order to prove their sex.”
Scanlon added, “Rather than trying to understand the nuances of a complicated issue, H.R. 28 takes a sledgehammer to the issue of athletic participation by transgender youth and replicates the very problem Title 9 sought to end – the exclusion of young people from sport based on their gender.”
Houlahan (D-Chester) incorrectly claimed the bill is “a blanket federal ban on all transgender girls in all school sports at every age and every level of competition.” Biological males who identify as female can participate in sports; they just can’t participate in girls’ sports.
Houlahan also made a states-rights argument against the bill.
“I want every student-athlete to be safe and to be able to participate in competitive sports, but state legislatures, local school districts, and sports associations already make the rules governing who can and cannot participate in different sports at different levels.
“Indeed, in more than a dozen states, trans athletes are lawfully able to participate in sports,” Houlahan said. “Additionally, similar bans to today’s bill have been vetoed by Republican and Democratic governors in Wisconsin, Ohio, and North Carolina recently. Our communities and this Commonwealth do not need, nor will we be helped by, distant politicians in Washington, D.C., dropping a one-size-fits-all blanket ban on sports participation.”
However, Houlahan supported the Biden administration’s attempt to use federal reworking of Title IX rules to force every state to allow biological males who identify as female to play on girls teams. The effort was struck down in federal court.
Jamie Walker, a Bucks County mother, said she supports the legislation. “I absolutely support not allowing biological males to play sports against females when they have their own teams to play and compete on. I am happy America is getting back to reality. Republicans are the party that wants to protect females.”
Felice Fein of West Goshen agrees.
“This bill’s passage brings common sense back into our schools and sports. It is tragic that over the last few years our daughters have been cheated out of scholarships and awards because extreme policies allowed biological males into girls sports. Thank you to all who voted to support women and Title IX.”
