Republicans in Pennsylvania’s state Senate are poised to make another attempt at restricting transgender athletes in school sports – legislation that is likely to face a higher hurdle than before, but which may provide a political wedge issue, depending on what polling you’re looking at.

An avalanche of bill memos were introduced this week in Harrisburg as Pennsylvania’s legislative session officially rolled over into the 2025-26 term. Notable among them for its number of co-sponsors was a memo signed by every female member of the Senate GOP, stating the intention to re-introduce a bill dubbed the “Save Women’s Sports Act.”

The legislation, first introduced in the 2021-22 session, would create a legal cause for individuals to sue K-12 schools, colleges, and universities if they allow transgender girls and women to compete in female sports.

Earlier bills stated that educational institutions in Pennsylvania are not to allow those of the male sex to compete in athletics designated for the female sex, with sex defined as being “based on reproductive biology and genetic make-up.”

Students who believe they have suffered harm due to an alleged violation of this rule are given explicit grounds for a civil suit, according to the 2021-22 session bill text.

“It’s imperative that we protect the opportunity for female athletes to compete on the athletic field in a fair and equal manner,” the Senators wrote in this week’s memo. “Allowing a biological male to compete on a women’s scholastic athletic team puts all women on the playing field at an automatic disadvantage.”

The Senate bill’s language is identical to a House bill that passed both chambers of the state legislature two sessions ago – when both had Republican majorities – but was vetoed by then-Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat. The terminology in the bills also matches that used by some conservative school boards which have sought to limit participation by trans athletes.

The bill does not state how school districts can insulate themselves from legal risk, nor does it specify exactly what “reproductive biology and genetic” standards should be established. In some other cases, conservative school boards have taken the latter term at face value and attempted to dictate what chromosomes athletes can have.

LGBTQ advocacy groups that have opposed such measures say the vague language is by design, and view the bills as an attempt to intimidate school administrators into not making any accommodations for transgender students for fear of a lawsuit.

Such measures go hand-in-hand, advocates say, with attempts to restrict gender-transition health services – such as the Tennessee law whose challenge was heard before the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday – and to police classroom speech regarding pronouns and other LGBTQ issues.

“These bills have nothing to do with women’s sports and everything to do with delegitimizing the humanity of trans youth,” said Jason Landau Goodman, an attorney and board chair of the Pennsylvania Youth Congress, an advocacy group for young LGBTQ people.

“The anti-trans sports ban bills they write are vague and unenforceable,” Goodman continued, questioning if lawmakers expect schools to draw children’s blood for genetic testing or examine their genitals before allowing them to play sports.

The issue – and the politics around it – have a number of grey areas. As far back as 2013, President Barack Obama’s administration moved to interpret Title IX – the rules on gender equality that apply to any school receiving federal funding – as also protecting LGBTQ students.

Donald Trump, in this first term as president, moved to rescind these rules, and President Joe Biden to reinstate them. Notably, the Biden administration also proposed a Title IX regulation that would have prohibited any blanket bans on transgender student-athletes, suggesting that schools should evaluate each case based on the level of competition, the risk of injury, and other similar factors.

Biden’s proposed rule reflected the idea – shared by many scientists – that there isn’t a one-size-fits all approach when it comes to the advantages that transgender athletes may or may not have, and that K-12 students who want to be included in recreational sports are a substantively different issue from controversies over male-to-female transgender athletes in elite college competitions.

But the Biden administration is not expected to finalize the sports-specific Title IX rule. As Vox reported earlier this year, the White House largely stopped talking about the issue amidst attacks from Republicans and concerns from Democrats that a nuanced approach to the topic was politically untenable. Regardless, Trump is almost certain to rescind Biden’s Title IX policies during his second term.

The Pennsylvania Human Relations Act prohibits discrimination in public services on the basis of sex; some advocates, including the Education Law Center, have said they believe bans of transgender student-athletes would be forbidden under this statute if challenged.

Additionally, current rules from the Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic Association (PIAA) – the governing body for public K-12 school sports – state that if a student’s gender is questioned, the final decision shall be made by the individual school’s principal.

“Many institutional athletic associations have been implementing inclusion protocols over the past ten years based on science and responsible public policy,” Goodman said. “Hard-and-fast blanket rules don’t work in this space, unless your real motive is to write transgender students out of public life.

Polling from Gallup, the Washington Post, and other outlets shows that a decisive majority of Americans oppose discrimination against transgender people – but a majority also oppose allowing trans athletes to play a sport that doesn’t match their gender assigned at birth.

Republicans have leaned heavily into voters’ skepticism; Trump consistently railed against “men in women’s sports” on the 2024 campaign trail, and campaign committees supporting him spent millions on attack ads accusing Democrats of taking radical positions on the issue.

Exit polling by Blueprint shows that a strong majority of swing voters who decided in favor of Trump believed the attack ads, even when they contained obviously false characterizations of his opponents’ positions.

But it’s unclear how much of a factor this was in their votes. LGBTQ rights, and transgender issues more specifically, consistently ranked low on voters’ lists of priorities, with the economy being an infinitely more influential topic.

Further, some polling suggests most voters are simply cynical about the issue and believe it’s being over-played.

A Data for Progress survey found four out of five voters believed both parties are spending too much time on transgender issues, and a slight majority agreed attack ads over trans rights topics had gotten “mean-spirited and out-of-hand.” An LA Times poll found that 77% of Americans believe transgender issues are being used by politicians to distract from more important matters.

“There are probably more legislators in the General Assembly supporting these bills than actual trans students in Pennsylvania who have been participating in school sports,” Goodman observed.

Both the state House and Senate are scheduled to return to Harrisburg on Jan. 7.