Alaska House Approves Ban on Trans Sports After Prolonged Obstruction by Opponents • Alaska Beacon

The Alaska House of Representatives voted 22-18 on Sunday night to ban transgender girls from girls’ school sports teams, limiting access to girls whose original birth certificates identify them as girls.

The decision followed hours of obstruction by a coalition of opponents, but supporters gathered enough votes to defeat dozens of changes proposed by those opponents and introduced House Bill 183 to the state Senate, where it is expected that the proposal dies without becoming law.

Although the Senate has said it will not hear the bill and there are no known transgender athletes in Alaska high school sports, it was still a priority for most House Republicans, who said they were responding to their constituents.

Rep. Jamie Allard, R-Anchorage, said she believes trans girls are boys and that House Republicans support other Alaskans who feel the same way.

“I want you to know that Alaska is with you. I’m with you. I know my majority members support them too. To the parents of Alaskan children, know that we will fight. We will fight for your children. We will fight for your girls in sports,” she said.

Opponents of the bill said that if the proposal ever became law, it would immediately generate legal challenges for being discriminatory.

“Trans girls are girls. Our gender identity is determined in our brains, it is encoded, it is fixed,” said Rep. Andrew Gray, D-Anchorage, who opposed the bill. “99.5% of us have a gender identity in our brains that corresponds to our physical bodies, half a percent do not.”

Rep. CJ McCormick, D-Bethel, has suffered from back problems since he was young. Speaking on the House floor, he said he was bullied and teased at school for being different.

“I’m a Bethel boy. I grew up in rural Alaska. I grew up with a rare spinal disease. The kids used to hit me, they just made fun of my neck,” he said.

He became friends with some of these bullies over a shared love of sports and strongly opposed the bill because it places barriers on sports for children, he said.

“This whole debate is – we’re talking about children! We are talking about children. We are attacking children!” he said.

Rep. Alyse Galvin, I-Anchorage, is the mother of a transgender daughter and said she finds it hard to believe Alaskans make this issue a top priority. She said she believes “outside agitators” and social media have encouraged people on the issue, but this can be overcome.

“I think we look inward. We tune out external voices of hate and discord. And we focus on our inner voice of love, empathy, compassion, understanding all the things we have been taught. The only way we can change the direction of harmful speech is to remove it from our hearts,” she said.

The final vote saw all 20 Republicans in the House majority caucus vote in favor of the bill, as did Reps. David Eastman, R-Wasilla, and Dan Ortiz, I-Ketchikan.

All House Democrats voted against the bill, as did all independents, with the exception of Ortiz. Rep. Louise Stutes, R-Kodiak and a member of the minority group, was the only Republican to vote against it.

After the bill passed, Rep. Zack Fields, D-Anchorage, requested a new vote, which could occur as soon as Tuesday. The project is expected to be approved in this new vote, although the vote total may change.