GOP Rules Package Prioritizes Targeting Trans Protections Under Title IX

On Wednesday, Republicans unveiled their first rules package for the upcoming Congress, setting the stage for a contentious legislative session. Much of the attention has focused on measures like increasing the difficulty of ousting the Speaker of the House and prioritizing a bill to sanction the International Criminal Court over its investigation of Israel’s actions in Gaza. However, buried within the package is a provision with enormous potential consequences for transgender people. Among the twelve bills prioritized for early votes in the next session, the very first listed is a bill targeting transgender protections under Title IX.

First reported by independent transgender journalist Mady Castigan, the provision specifies that Title IX compliance in athletics would be determined by “biological sex.” Notably, the bill does not define “biological sex.” Previous Republican proposals have defined the term in ways that exclude not only transgender individuals but also intersex people. It remains unclear whether this bill would extend its redefinition of sex beyond athletics to encompass all aspects of Title IX. If so, the implications could be sweeping, potentially affecting transgender people’s access to bathrooms, locker rooms, and protections in discrimination cases nationwide.

You can view a description from the rules package here:

The inclusion of an anti-trans bill as the first among the Republican Party’s twelve legislative priorities signals a clear direction for the party over the next two years, with control of both the House and Senate. National Republicans have shown little hesitation in advancing anti-trans legislation, and their momentum appears to be growing. Recently, 81 Democrats supported a National Defense Authorization Act that stripped transgender healthcare coverage for military service members’ youth dependents, a move some may have justified as a necessary concession to avoid appearing “weak on the military” or allegations that they would defund the military. Unlike the NDAA, however, this proposed Title IX bill will stand alone, forcing Democrats to take a direct and unambiguous vote on transgender rights for the first time in this Congress.

The dynamics in the Senate are even more important. During the NDAA negotiations, Senate Democratic leadership blocked a vote to remove the provision stripping transgender care, sidelining efforts led by Tammy Baldwin and 20 other Democrats to protect transgender youth. With Democrats losing control of the Senate in 2025, blocking anti-trans provisions will become even more challenging. To stop the Title IX bill, it will take 40 Democratic Senators to uphold a filibuster, a unity that may not been guaranteed on transgender issues. Whether Democrats will hold strong or allow the bill to advance remains uncertain, but the Senate stands as the strongest line of defense against this and other anti-trans legislation in the upcoming Congress.

It remains to be seen how voters will react to a Congress prioritizing anti-transgender legislation over the host of other pressing issues facing the nation. Similar trends have emerged in state legislatures, where debates over transgender rights have consumed vast amounts of time. In the past two years alone, over 1,000 bills targeting transgender people have been introduced in statehouses. Now, just two days into the new legislative year, over 125 anti-trans and anti-queer bills have already been filed across the country, signaling that this issue will continue to dominate legislative agendas at both state and federal levels.

In Missouri last year, Democrat Doug Mann delivered a powerful rebuke of the escalating wave of anti-trans legislation, which has grown with each passing year. “When it became no longer acceptable to be anti-gay in public, people moved to being anti-trans,” he said. “When you start to attack an already vulnerable group of people, you do not stop with that already vulnerable group of people … I’m going to be honest, I do not trust that this is the end. I do not trust that if this passes, that people will be placated, that people will be happy … Everything I have seen as a student of history, as a student of politics, as a student of government, tells me that it is going to go farther. Things are going to get worse, not better.”

Those words have proven prophetic in the actions of Congress leading up to 2025. One of the first moves by leaders of the incoming Congress was to target the first transgender congresswoman, Sarah McBride, by banning her from using the women’s restroom — the same restroom she has used for years. The fight, spearheaded by Nancy Mace, who publicly used slurs against transgender people during the debate, culminated in a bathroom ban for transgender individuals in the Capitol. Notably, according to the Congressional Equality Caucus, as reported by Politico, the Capitol building itself lacks single-stall restrooms, leaving transgender people with few or no viable options. Mace has since stated her intention to nationalize that bathroom ban to every federal property in America.

Still, the prioritization of transgender issues appears wildly out of step with voter priorities. Post-election polls indicate the top concerns for voters were inflation, jobs, the economy, threats to democracy, abortion, and Project 2025. Transgender issues, by contrast, barely register—and among those who do prioritize them, twice as many identify as Democrats than Republicans. Yet Republican leadership seems determined to double down, mirroring the approach of state GOPs that have sidelined critical issues in favor of targeting transgender people. They appear to be betting that the 2024 election validated this strategy, but it’s a gamble. If voters perceive an excessive focus on attacking transgender people while other pressing concerns go unaddressed, Republican majorities could face significant backlash in 2026.

This piece was republished with permission from Erin In The Morning.