The so-called “Equitable Treatment of Women and Girls in Sports Act" attempts to ban transgender and intersex athletes in Arizona from playing in school and college sports consistent with their gender, with transmisogyny placing special emphasis on women’s teams.

The proposed act will let cisgender students sue schools that allows trans athletes to participate. It also gives schools the power to sue if their team competes with one that has trans athletes, and safeguards anti-trans policies by not allowing government entities to challenge the ban.

Excluding trans girls and femme youth from participating in sports has negative outcomes for all youth. It invites a systemic policing of gender through bio-essentialist ideas that perpetuate a white supremicist patriarchy that molds cisgender women and girls into a category that needs ‘protection.’

These tests have a legacy of being used in anti-Black racism — they discriminate against Black women like Caster Semenya, while genetic differences that give cisgender white men like Micheal Phelps an advantage, are celebrated.

The proposed act also lets cisgender students take action against schools to recieve ‘relief to be compensated’ for playing with trans students and gives them the power to possibly be ‘compensated’ if someone calls them out for being transphobic in context to participating with trans athletes.

And it gives schools the power to receive ‘relief’ if their team competes with a team that has trans athletes, and it safeguards its anti-trans policies by not allowing government entities, athletic organizations or schools to challenge the ban.

Most lawmakers and sponsors behind anti-trans sports bans, don’t know of any trans athletes in their states, and this act follows a common theme of erasure in these legislative attacks: it doesn’t use the word “transgender” or “intersex” even once, and perpetuates false narratives through its binary understanding of “biological sex.”

Here are four facts that debunk common myths about trans athletes: https://www.aclu.org/news/lgbt-rights/four-myths-about-trans-athletes-debunked/

AZ SB 1046 by Republican Senator Wendy Rogers was pre-filed on 22nd December, 2021.