Ahead of a hearing on a pair of anti-trans bills in Montana, over 150 businesses signed onto a letter opposing the legislation.
In a Thursday letter coordinated by the ACLU of Montana, local and national businesses claim that a pair of proposed bills, House Bills 112 and 113, would “harm transgender youth, their families, their healthcare providers, and their communities,” in addition to discouraging people from living or working in Montana “due to discriminatory and outdated laws.”
“HB 112 and HB 113, supported by anti-equality legislators, single out young members of our thriving communities simply for who they are and are deeply damaging to our state,” the businesses write.
The two bills, respectively, would require all transgender students in Montana to compete on school sports teams in accordance with their “biological sex” and prevent doctors from providing gender-affirming care to minors, such as hormone therapy, puberty blockers, or surgery. If found in violation of HB 113, medical professionals could face a fine ranging anywhere from $500 to $50,000, according to the local newspaper Helena Independent Record.
The conservative lawmaker behind these bills, state Rep. John Fuller (R-Whitefish), has claimed that they are necessary to “protect children from such barbaric behavior.” “We don’t let children do all kinds of things,” Fuller said in comments cited by the Independent Record. “Why should we allow this to happen?”
Specifically addressing HB 112, Fuller added that allowing transgender youth to participate in sports teams in alignment with their gender is “egregious and wrong.” “It’s an important matter because women’s sports are vital,” said Fuller, who has coached women’s soccer in the past and believes that transgender girls “have a physical advantage.” “I want to protect and defend women’s sports.”
But claims that transgender students have a competitive edge based on their intrinsic physiology do not bear out in the science. According to the NCAA’s inclusion manual, the widely held belief that “all male-bodied people are taller, stronger, and more highly skilled in a sport than all female-bodied people is not accurate.”
“A male-to-female transgender woman may be small and slight, even if she is not on hormone blockers or taking estrogen,” says the 38-page document, which was unveiled in 2011. “[…] It is also important to know that any strength and endurance advantages a transgender woman arguably may have as a result of her prior testosterone levels dissipate after about one year of estrogen or testosterone-suppression therapy.”
A 2016 literature review published by the American Journal of Sports Medicine came to the same conclusion, finding that “there is no direct or consistent research suggesting transgender female individuals (or male individuals) have an athletic advantage at any stage of their transition (e.g. cross-sex hormones, gender-confirming surgery).”
“Therefore, competitive sport policies that place restrictions on transgender people need to be considered and potentially revised,” the study found.
A hearing on HB 112 and HB 113 was scheduled for Wednesday but has been cancelled, according to the Montana State Legislature’s website. While a new date has not been added to its calendar, advocates fear that the proposals could be likely to pass in a lawmaking body where the GOP controls a supermajority in the Senate and a near-supermajority in the House. Republican Greg Gianforte was sworn into the governor’s office this month, the first conservative to hold the office in 16 years.
Opponents of the legislation claim that, if passed, Montana could experience major fallout from the enactment of HB 112 and HB 113. Pete Strom, president of the local businesses SHINE Beer Sanctuary and La Parrilla, said the backlash could mirror the fate of North Carolina’s HB 2, an anti-trans “bathroom bill” that was quickly repealed and replaced after a national boycott.
