NC’s Foxx, Adams and Manning at odds on transgender athletes, parents’ rights at schools
Three of North Carolina’s representatives spent 16 hours over two days debating whether transgender girls should compete on girls’ sports teams and how much access parents should have to their children’s education.
In the end, both bills are heading to the House floor.
Debate on the bills began last week in the House Committee on Workforce and Education, which is chaired by Rep. Virginia Foxx, a Republican from Banner Elk. She helped champion the bills.
Her colleagues, Reps. Alma Adams and Kathy Manning, Democrats from Charlotte and Greensboro, respectively, also serve on the committee and opposed both.
Advocates of the bills say they’re protecting women and girls’ rights to compete on fair playing fields and giving parents back the right to be heard over concerns in their child’s classrooms.
Opponents say the bills advance a political agenda and would create unnecessary and burdensome reporting requirements and divert essential resources and personnel away from families’ real needs at school.
Transgender girls and sports
The committee discussions opened with a focus on transgender girls playing in girls’ sports.
H.R. 734, known as the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act of 2023, would declare that an educational institution receiving federal funding is in violation of Title IX if the institution allows a person, who was classified as a male at birth based on reproductive biology and genetics, to play on a female sports team or activity.
Title IX is federal law that prohibits sex-based discrimination in any federally funded educational program or school activity.
Foxx said in the hearing that she worked at Appalachian State University when Title IX first passed.
“Recently, I’ve watched as it has been perverted to achieve the opposite of its intentions,” Foxx said before the committee. “It is now a tool used by the education bureaucracy to enforce inequality and unfairness. As a mother and past educator I abhor the increasing prevalence of biological men competing in women’s sports, enabled by the current interpretation of Title IX.”
Adams said the “barely one-page bill” does nothing to advance, enrich or uplift girls and women in sports.
“Anti-trans proposals like HR 734 do nothing but attempt to bully and put targets on the backs of transgender girls and attempts to limit their opportunities,” Adams said.
This is the third attempt Republicans have made at passing the bill, but the first since they took over control of the House. If the bill makes it through the House and the Senate, where Democrats hold a slight majority, it’s highly unlikely Biden would sign it into law.
Rep. Bobby Scott, a Democrat from Virginia, said there has been just 34 instances of transgender women competing in collegiate sports.
An Ipsos poll conducted last summer found that 63% of people polled oppose transgender female student athletes competing on women’s or girls’ sports teams. Democrats polled were split with 46% to 41% supporting transgender female athletes, while the majority of Republicans and independents both were in opposition.
“Progressives are pushing a gender-bending agenda that erodes this progress and ignores science,” Foxx said, in a news release, “but Committee Republicans are firm in our commitment to protecting — and cultivating — opportunities for women to succeed.”
At least 18 states around the country have a state law or statewide rule to ban transgender women from participating in women’s sports. The Human Rights Campaign is tracking at least 150 bills this year that target the rights of transgender individuals.
Parents’ Bill of Rights
The committee also took up H.R. 5, known as The Parents Bill of Rights Act.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy introduced the bill a week earlier, saying that House Republicans reserved the number for the bill both because age 5 is when students begin kindergarten and because the bill has five main pillars:
The right to know what your child is being taught in school;
The right to be heard;
The right to see school budgets and how they spend money;
The right to protect your child’s privacy;
The right to be updated on any violent activity at school.
“We think these are pretty basic things that everybody and every parent should have a right to,” McCarthy said.
A similar bill was proposed in 2021 when Democrats held the majority and never made it to a vote. Last year, 26 state legislatures introduced 84 bills to expand parents’ rights in schools. North Carolina’s lawmakers reintroduced their version earlier this year.
Foxx said in a news release that the House bill reaffirms the rights of parents to ensure the success and well-being of their child while at school.
Its requirements include ensuring that school districts post online the curricula for primary and secondary schools and the district’s plan for parent and family engagement, and that the state posts online and widely disseminates any changes to the academic standards.
School districts would be required to post online that a parent has the right to review curriculum, budgets and a list of books in a school’s library, to know if the state alters academic standards, to meet with their child’s teacher at least twice per year, to address the school board and to access plans to eliminate gifted or talented programs at a school.
Schools would be required to provide parents a list of books in the school library at the beginning of the school year and provide parents timely notice of violent events at school or school-sponsored activities where one or more students are injured.
Foxx said in a news release that during the pandemic, parents were able to hear firsthand what their children were being taught and were silenced or ignored if they spoke out.
“Parents will finally be empowered to examine classroom curricula and protect the safety and privacy of their children without fear of being targeted by the federal government,” Foxx said.
Manning told the committee schools have real problems that need to be addressed and would be better served if the committee spent time focusing on those issues.
“We should support our students and our parents and we should make sure our students have the tools and resources to succeed in school, to learn to read competently, to understand history, math, science, social students, to become critical thinkers and problem solvers to they can become productive and fulfilled members of society,” she said.
Manning said the committee should be focused on those issues, “instead of focusing on which material extreme politicians believe should be stricken from the classroom, or extra burdens that should be put on teachers and administrators by forcing them to share lists of every book in the school library.”
This story was originally published March 14, 2023 at 6:00 AM.
