All across the country, Americans are debating whether or not transgender females should have the right to play girls' sports with biological females. There is an argument for inclusion and there is an argument for fairness due to the inherent differences in the bodies and athletic abilities of biological males and females.
This has spilled over into middle school and high school sports. More young people are identifying as transgender than ever. Approximately 1.4% of teenagers between the ages of 13 and 17 identify as transgender. Nearly 43% of transgender individuals are under the age of 25.
In many states, legislatures are taking action to ban transgender females from participating in girls' sports. In states that haven't taken up the issue legally, school districts are forced to grapple with the question themselves.
The Laurel School District in New Castle, Pennsylvania has decided to tread into controversial waters and settle this lingering issue for their students. Their new school policy only allows students with "XX chromosomes" to participate in girls' sports.
The school board passed the initiative unanimously on September 13th, 2023. According to the resolution, "The district shall not entertain, permit or otherwise allow or recognize an opponent who competes against a Laurel female athletic program hosted at a Laurel facility and has an athlete on their roster who does not have XX chromosomes."
"The Laurel School District believes that biological men have an athletic advantage on biological women. So, that's an issue of fairness. But in some of these incidents, we also believe that biological men playing in the women's division against women represent a threat to the health, safety and welfare of those competitors," said Len Rich, superintendent of the Laurel School District.
According to Rich, there was an incident last year at a volleyball game involving a transgender player that illustrates why transgender females should not be playing sports with biological females.
"A biological male returned a ball and it struck the female competitor, leaving her concussed and what understand still having comp complications from that injury," Rich said.
"The PIAA has said to the 500 school districts that, do what you want and oh, by the way, your principals are deciding, despite them having any lack of any medical training and what that may or may not imply, it is consistently inconsistent," Rich said.
These issues were fundamental in pushing Laurel School District to act and implement this new policy. Rich hopes that other school districts in Pennsylvania will also take a stand with their policies on transgender females participating in girls' sports.
"We're hoping that if we take this step that we come up with a universal standard and we preserve female competition for biological females," Rich said. "Our sports teams here at Laurel for all female sports teams, you must be a biological female. And we have gone further and said that in our house, on our facilities, we want the opposition to do the same thing."
KDKA-TV stated that most of the district's residents they spoke with agreed with the school's new policy.
"If you're born a boy, you should only be on that team. If you're born a girl, you should only be on that team. There's no question whatsoever," said Sharlene Moore, a New Castle resident. "My children were on the swim team and a boy is a boy and girl is a girl. Boys have larger lung capacity. They have different muscle structure. They have the capabilities of going faster, being able to endure more than what a girl can."
"There's too much danger. Let's say that, all right. Let's take the locker room out of it. Let's take bathrooms out of it. Let's just go full-blown danger," said Steve McGranahan, a New Castle resident and former sports coach.
It's clear that this issue is not going away anytime soon and that school districts may be forced to make their stance known one way or the other. The ideal policy would be one that does not trample on girls' rights to a safe and fair playing environment while simultaneously being sensitive and inclusive to transgender issues.
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