Michigan lawmakers consider bills to bar transgender girls from playing school sports
State Rep. Rylee Linting (R-Wyandotte) speaks outside the Michigan State Capitol Building in support of legislation to ban transgender girls from female school sports teams on May 15, 2025. | Photo: Anna Liz Nichols
Legislation to amend Michigan's civil rights laws and school rules to bar female transgender students from participating on sports teams aligning with their gender identity drew debate at the Michigan Capitol Thursday.
Republican lawmakers sponsoring the bills stood outside the Capitol in the morning, joined by Payton McNabb, a former North Carolina high school athlete who said in 2022 she sustained a traumatic brain injury and other permanent injuries during a highschool volleyball game after a transgender athlete spiked the ball into her head.
President Donald Trump acknowledged McNabb, 20, at his joint address to Congress in March touting his executive order threatening to revoke federal money from educational institutions allowing transgender female athletes to compete on female sports teams.
'Biology is not bigotry,' McNabb said, contending that every adult who allowed a transgender girl onto the girls volleyball team failed her and denied the reality that there is a difference between the athletic ability of male and female athletes.
'It is not loving to lie and a man can just simply never become a woman no matter how many surgeries, what kind of clothes they're putting on, it's just not going to work,' McNabb said. 'I've decided to try to use my story and turn pain into purpose and hopefully hope or use my story to make sure that this does not happen to any other girl across the nation.'
According to GLAAD, McNabb is a paid spokesperson for the Independent Women's Forum, a group 'that aggressively lobbies against transgender people'.
House Bills 4469 and 4066 dictate that schools must designate sports teams based on the sex listed on an athlete's original birth certificate from the time they were born. The legislation would ban schools and districts from allowing 'individuals of the male sex to participate in any interscholastic athletic team or sport designated as only for participants of the female sex'.
In order to safeguard the 'integrity' of women's sports, ensuring that girls don't have to compete against 'biological males', bill sponsor Rep. Rylee Linting (R-Wyandotte) said there needs to be consistency in definitions for sports participation.
'This is not about putting anyone down. This is about lifting up our young girls who have dreams, making sure that they have a level playing field, that they are not robbed of scholarship opportunities, a spot on the team, or worse, seriously injured,' Linting said.
LGBTQ+ advocates condemn House resolution asking to bar transgender girls from high school sports
Earlier Thursday morning Linting and proponents for the bills, including anti-trans athlete advocate and former NCAA swimmer for the University of Kentucky Riley Gaines, who pre-recorded her testimony, advocated in the House Government Operations Committee for an amendment to Michigan's Elliott-Larsen Civil Right Act specifying schools can base sports eligibility based on sex markers on original birth certificates.
If the sponsors of the bills are so interested in the health and safety of women and girls, they ought to look at actual issues impacting their safety like gun violence, housing affordability or food insecurity, Emme Zanotti, senior director of movement building and political affairs at Equality Michigan said during the committee meeting.
Sports are bigger than trophies, Zanotti told lawmakers during the committee meeting. Whether kids finish in first place or tie for fifth place, athletes learn important values such as perseverance and teamwork.
'We should want more young people to play sports in our state, not put up more barriers for all girls, like invasive inspections and ridicule about what gender they are because their hair is too short, they're too tall, their shoulders are too broad, or because they have a good serve,' Zanotti said.
As a transgender woman and a coach to trangender athletes, Sarah Antaya told lawmakers on the committee kids aren't necessarily going to remember every trophy or medal they didn't win, but the bullying and discrimination they face when trying to participate in sports, to have fun like all the other kids, will have an effect.
The vast majority of children in sports are not going to get a scholarship or become professional athletes, Antaya said, and coming from a hockey and roller derby background, she said the majority of injuries in sports aren't in totality due to an opponent being 'grossly physically superior'.
'The vast majority of injuries happen because injuries happen. It's sports, and to say that we need to protect these kids from other girls is just a false narrative,' Antaya said. 'These bills are simply taking away opportunities from kids who are just trying to be themselves, who are just trying to live, who just want to play the sports they've grown up loving, and be a part of the team with their peers that they've grown up with.'
The bills cleared the all male-member committee with no support from Democrats.
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