A Republican-led bill to bar transgender girls from competing on girls and women’s elementary and secondary school sports teams in Minnesota is expected to be hotly debated on the state House floor Monday afternoon.

And if the morning’s events at the Capitol are any indication, the battle lines are starkly partisan.

The bill in question, called the Preserving Girls’ Sports Act, was introduced last month by Rep. Peggy Scott, R-Andover, in the House Education Policy Committee, prompting a heated debate that reignited Monday.

A rally on the Capitol steps featured Riley Gaines, a 12-time NCAA All-American swimmer, a conservative girls sports advocate and vice chair of Athletes for America with the America First Policy Institute, a nonprofit supporting President Donald Trump’s policy initiatives, which include barring transgender athletes from competing on women’s sports teams.

Gaines, former team captain of the University of Kentucky’s girls swimming team, tied University of Pennsylvania transgender athlete Lia Thomas for fifth place in the 2022 NCAA Division 1 Women’s Swimming and Diving Championship. Since then, she’s sued the NCAA, and testified before state legislatures and the U.S. Congress supporting laws to ban transgender girls from women’s sports teams.

“You have a governor, you have an attorney general, you have elected officials, essentially an entire political party who are willing to send a political message and do everything in their power to say that ‘We will put all Minnesotans at risk because we believe boys deserve to trample on girls,’” Gaines said. The crowd booed and hissed in response.

Gaines, who descended down the Capitol stairs flanked by state troopers and former Minneapolis police union chief Bob Kroll, said it was “crazy” that she needed a “an entourage of security for saying something as simple as men and women are different. It’s utterly insane.”

In a news conference following the rally, DFL opponents of the bill called it a waste of time and divisive. Although Republicans hold a 67-66 advantage in the House, 68 votes are needed to pass a bill and Democrats said they expect all of their brethren to oppose it.