While Republican lawmakers across the country have pushed bills this year banning trans students from playing on sports teams that match their gender identity, a large majority of the American public opposes these efforts. According to a Friday poll from NPR, PBS NewsHour, and Marist, 67% of Americans oppose bills restricting the participation of transgender youth in school athletics.
Opposition to anti-trans legislation was consistent across political parties: Just 25% of Democrats and 28% of Independents said they support these bills, while the poll suggests that few GOP voters agree with these bills, even as conservatives seek to exploit trans rights as a wedge issue ahead of the 2022 midterms. Only 29% of Republicans said they “support a bill that prohibits transgender student athletes from joining sports teams that match their gender identity.”
While the public largely agrees that trans sports participation shouldn’t be legislated, there is a large rift between Democrats and Republicans concerning whether they think trans athletes should be allowed to participate.
About 75% of Democrats said trans athletes should be able to participate in sports that match their gender in high school, with a similar portion stating they should be able to play in middle school, college, and grad school. In contrast, roughly 80% of Republicans said they should not be permitted to do so at all levels of competition.
The poll revealed that Americans are split almost 50-50 on whether trans students should be able to participate in sports that align with their gender: with 47% saying supporting trans inclusion and 48% opposing.
Lee Miringoff, director of the Marist College Institute for Public Opinion, told NPR that the data shows that Americans are broadly reluctant to impose strict bans on youth access to athletics. “There clearly is a sense that a lot of people don’t want to legislate this at the state level,” Miringoff said. “They do not want to move in a direction of formally discriminating in these regards.”
So far this year, lawmakers in over two dozen states have introduced anti-trans legislation in 2021, with the majority targeting trans student athletes. Florida and Texas are two of the most recent states to advance anti-trans sports bills through their respective legislatures, while legislators in North Dakota and Alabama lawmakers recently delivered similar bills to their governor’s desks.
Proponents of anti-trans sports legislation frequently argue that these bills are necessary to ensure cis female athletes are not disadvantaged but have struggled to point to specific examples of trans female athletes outperforming their cisgender peers. Meanwhile, data reveal that few trans students even participate in sports. For example, there are reportedly fewer than 10 out trans athletes in North Carolina public high schools, as them. has previously reported.
The poll from NPR, PBS NewsHour, and Marist also shows that 65% of Americans oppose bills that would criminalize gender transition-related medical care for trans youth, compared to 28% who support such legislation. Earlier this month, Arkansas became the first state in U.S. history to enact a law limiting access to treatments like puberty blockers and hormone therapy to transgender minors, and nearly 20 other states have put forward similar legislation in 2021, according to the LGBTQ+ advocacy group Freedom for All Americans.
The survey also found that a majority of the public (63%) supports the Equality Act, proposed legislation that would append existing federal civil rights protections in areas like housing and education to include sexual orientation and gender identity. That landmark bill has stalled in the Senate, where it faces opposition from Republican lawmakers, after passing the House for the second time in February.
But as in the case of anti-trans sports bills, liberals and conservatives are widely divided when it comes to the Equality Act. Around 90% of Democrats and 62% of independents say they support the legislation, compared to just 32% of conservatives.
The poll, which surveyed 1,266 adults between April 7-13, contains a 3.3% margin of error, which means the results could be roughly 3 points higher or lower.
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