Trans Sports Ban Fails In Ohio After Republicans Split On Genital Inspections

In a last minute battle between hyper-conservative and moderate factions of the Republican party, a bill that would ban transgender girls from school sports fails. Here's how it happened.

After hours of overnight testimony and debate, the Ohio House of Representatives voted in the early morning hours to kill HB151, a bill that would have banned transgender kids from school sports that match their gender identity. The bill, introduced in February of 2022, has been the subject of many committee hearings. It was passed out of the House on June 1st with an astonishing provision - it would require any challenged athletes to undergo internal and external genital examinations. Many viewed these examinations as too extreme. When the bill finally made its way into the Senate, they stripped the mandatory genital examinations, breaking rank with the House. Last night, disagreements on this provision by House Republicans along with the addition of “vaccine nondiscrimination” and an overhaul of the Ohio School Board led to Republicans failing to pass the bill. This is thanks to the powerful testimony of trans athletes in Ohio like Ember Zelch, Connor McLarren and organizations like Equality Ohio.

Activists have been fighting the transgender sports ban and many other pieces of anti-trans legislation in Ohio for the last two years. The House has introduced particularly heinous bills like HB454, which would have forcibly detransitioned trans youth. When HB151 was slated to pass in June, Representatives like Rep Liston called out the terrifying provisions in the bill:

Erin Reed @ErinInTheMorn

Rep Liston standing up there for trans youth, AGAIN. She's quickly becoming one of my favorite state legislators.

Erin Reed @ErinInTheMorn

Rep Liston: "If anyone decides to question a child's true gender, that child has to undergo a sensitive exam possibly including internal evaluation, get testosterone measured, and get chromosomal analysis."

That’s right - the bill would require genital inspections, internal and external. Looking very closely at the language in HB151, which was the language up until the Senate decided it was too extreme to pass, if a participants sex was disputed they could trigger an investigation into the sex of the child. This could be for any number of reasons, such as a jealous parent of an opposing team’s athlete. This investigation would require an examination that included “the participants internal and external reproductive anatomy.” Ohio’s House was so terrified of transgender people that it was willing to subject its children to these types of inspections.

Ohio’s Senate immediately bucked. There were already statements that Governor DeWine would not sign any transgender sports bill. Ohio Republicans, however, still had an enormous appetite for anti-transgender legislation - this was going to be their “one success on this issue” after HB454 failed earlier this year. So they pushed during a late night lame duck session to get this passed. They tried to be a more “moderate” (nothing is moderate about taking away trans rights) voice by removing the genital inspections and limiting the bill to K-12 schools as seen at 2:03 in this video. They also added 2,000 pages to the law that gave the Governor’s office power over the Ohio Board of Education - something that would be very tempting for the governor to sign.

The Ohio House of Representatives got the bill back and quickly began to split. Some conservative Republicans indicated a lack of support for the bill - they supported this bill when it had the genital inspections included. Multiple conservatives who voted for the bill when it had the language in it, such as Rep S. Arthur, Rep J. Schmidt, Rep M. Loychik, and Rep D. Grendell, voted against it or abstained. Many of these people actually sponsored the original bill. They debated into the early morning hours and ultimately, the bill did not pass.

We owe the victory to the activists who spoke up. Families like the family of Ember Zelch, a transgender girl who plays girls sports in Ohio, spoke up. Both Ember and her mother testified powerfully. Minna Zelch looked at the elected officials to talk about her daughter: “After all that if you think my daughter still has an advantage, think about this. The normal range of testosterone for males is 300-1200 ng/dl. For females at the same age its 20-75 ng/dl. My daughter has given me permission to share with you that at her last blood draw in October, her testosterone was 12 ng/dl. You’re talking about advantage: cisgender girls have an advantage over my daughter.”

Cam Ogden @CamomileOgden

There were many powerful voices that spoke out against the Ohio trans athlete ban, but one person that stuck out to me was Minna Zelch. Her daughter, Ember, is one of the only trans athletes in Ohio playing high school sports. Her powerful testimony is worth listening to. (Pt. 1)

The Movement Advancement Project has reported that 18 states currently ban transgender athletes from school sports according to their gender identity. These states enforce the bans in a variety of ways, but some have passed genital inspections. Florida and Idaho both have genital inspection provisions in their laws. Some states have found out the hard way that these bills not only target trans students but cis ones as well. Utah’s trans athlete ban lasted barely a week after it was used to target a cisgender student. Shortly after, a court enjoined it.

Transgender athlete bans are not logical, rational, or fair. This is because sex, like gender, is not binary. There is not a single test that you can administer that cis people will not also fail. The Olympics learned this in 1996 when several cis women discovered they had a Y chromosome - it is possible for people with Y chromosomes to develop cisgender bodies. Hormone levels can be higher among some cis women than cis men due to hormonal conditions. Even genitalia can be ambiguous and altered. Transgender people belong in sports, just like their cisgender peers. The attempts to invasively inspect all kids because a few transgender people might play is emblematic of anti-trans panic that we have seen in recent years. It is a wonderful victory that this bill failed.