Bill to ban transgender girls from playing sports solves a problem Arizona doesn't have

Update: The bill passed the Arizona House on March 3, on a party line 31-29 vote.

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The Arizona Legislature has at long last solved the vexing problem of how to fund and fix what ails public schools.

No longer is rural Arizona at risk of having its future literally drained away because there are no limits on groundwater pumping.

Meanwhile, the locks on our prison cells finally work.

All this must be true.

Why else would Rep. Nancy Barto, R-Phoenix, and 22 other members of the Arizona House be devoting their energies to the vital work of deciding who can play high school softball or intramural volleyball?

Transgender athletes are unfair?

House Bill 2706 stands as proof that our leaders must have fixed all the major problems confronting this state and now are onto the problems that actually aren’t – problems in this state, that is.

And so comes the “Save Women’s Sports Act.”

In a nutshell, the bill would prevent transgender girls and women from playing on female sports teams at any public or private school, college or university in Arizona.

“Female student athletes should not be forced to compete in a sport against biological males, who possess inherent physiological advantages,” Barto, the bill’s chief sponsor, said in a prepared release. “When this is allowed, it discourages female participation in athletics and, worse, it can result in women and girls being denied crucial educational and financial opportunities.”

Barto is bringing the bill at the behest of the Scottsdale-based Alliance Defending Freedom, which in June filed a federal discrimination complaint on behalf of three female track athletes in Connecticut who say transgender competitors have cost them top finishes and possibly college scholarships.

The same bill has been introduced in a dozen or more state legislatures this year.

No Arizona athletes have been hurt

Barto considers it “a matter of basic fairness.” Thus far, however, she’s been unable to identify a single example of an Arizona athlete being “denied crucial educational and financial opportunities” because of a transgender competitor.

Maybe that’s because it hasn’t happened here?

The Arizona Interscholastic Association approved the first transgender student-athletes to compete in 2014 but has received few requests since then.

AIA's policy requires transgender athletes to explain their “gender story, including age at emerging awareness of incongruence between sex assigned at birth and gender identity and where the student is in the gender transition process.”

They also must submit letters of support from a parent, a school administrator and a doctor. Their application must then be approved by the AIA’s Sports Medicine Advisory Committee, which reviews applications on a case-by-case basis, and by the AIA’s executive board.

Jeannine Brandel, president of the AIA executive board, told the Arizona Mirror’s Laura Gómez that she hasn’t seen a problem.

“I have not seen an unfair advantage,” she said. “In my opinion, transgender people aren’t (transitioning) to compete and gain an advantage as an athlete."

If we're talking unfair advantages ...

They may, however, be struggling to feel as if they are part of something. School sports can help there.

Surely, that’s a good outcome when transgender students attempt suicide at twice or more the rate of other teens, according to a study by Pediatrics, the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Barto says her bill “ensures a level playing field for all students who play sports.”

If that’s the case, then perhaps her bill also should bar parents from spending tens of thousands of dollars to send their kids to elite sports camps and hire special coaches to train them, giving them an unfair advantage over students whose parents can’t afford such luxuries.

Or is it only transgender athletes who result in girls “being denied crucial educational and financial opportunities” that sports can bring?

A balance too delicate for lawmakers

This is a complex issue, one for which there are no easy answers. Some states, like Arizona, allow an athlete to compete based on their gender identity, with approval given on a case-by-case basis. Some allow it only after a year of hormone treatment. And some, not at all.

Careful consideration is needed – along with some actual facts about the true impact of transgender females in women's sports – to find that delicate balance that will protect the rights of all student athletes. 

But what are the odds that the Arizona Legislature has the deft touch to find that delicate balance? 

Where is the evidence that female participation in Arizona sports is plummeting or that female athletes in Arizona are being denied "crucial educational and financial opportunities” because of transgender competitors? 

This bill has the feel of being more about winning an election than about leveling the playing field.

Barto is facing a tough campaign this year as she seeks to defeat her fellow Republican seatmate, Sen. Heather Carter, in this northeast Valley district. The support of the conservative Alliance Defending Freedom and the powerful Center for Arizona Policy, which is backing Barto's bill, is, no doubt, a big advantage.

But running over the backs of children and young adults to get it? Sponsoring a bill that will further ostracize them in order to solve a problem that apparently doesn’t even exist as yet in Arizona?

That’s just cold.

Reach Roberts at laurie.roberts@arizonarepublic.com.