Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act of 2023

Floor Speech

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Mr. OGLES. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I am grateful that the House of Representatives is taking a stand to protect women and girls in this country and to ensure that they continue to have access to athletic opportunities at school. I strongly support the Protecting Women and Girls in Sports Act.

My amendment strengthens the underlying bill by protecting schools from a weaponized bureaucracy and frivolous lawsuits as they work to comply with the intentions of the bill.

Many schools provide a wide range of programs and activities to support their student athletes. This amendment ensures that schools can continue to provide a range of resources exclusively or preferentially to members of an athletic team without worrying about activist bureaucrats or opportunistic trial lawyers targeting them with disingenuous arguments about what constitutes an athletic program or activity.

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Mr. OGLES. Mr. Chair, no woman or girl in our country should be forced to lose competitions to biological men. No school in our country should be punished for fighting to preserve the integrity of women's sports.

We cannot pass up an opportunity to protect schools from adverse actions accusing them of discrimination when they provide a tutor to a team or they let athletes move into a dorm early or accommodate a practice schedule.

We know Democrats will work to pursue every loophole imaginable to undermine this bill, and we should take this opportunity to stop them before they can start.

Mr. Chair, I urge adoption of my amendment, and I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. OGLES. Mr. Chair, I reiterate that no woman or girl should be forced to lose competitions to biological men. I say that as a father of a daughter who is an athlete. I say that as a father to two sons who are athletes. Girls should play girls' sports, and boys should play boys' sports.

Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

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Mr. OGLES. Mr. Chair, I move that the Committee do now rise.

The motion was agreed to.

Accordingly, the Committee rose; and the Speaker pro tempore (Mr. Edwards) having assumed the chair, Mr. Flood, Acting Chair of the Committee of the Whole House on the state of the Union, reported that that Committee, having had under consideration the bill (H.R. 734) to amend the Education Amendments of 1972 to provide that for purposes of determining compliance with title IX of such Act in athletics, sex shall be recognized based solely on a person's reproductive biology and genetics at birth, had come to no resolution thereon.

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