Alaska High School Sports Association is considering banning transgender girls from girls’ sports teams
JUNEAU — Alaska’s high school athletic association is considering amending its bylaws that would limit the participation of transgender girls on girls’ high school athletic teams.
The proposed policy, scheduled for review by the Alaska School Activities Association in May, is based on a nonbinding resolution approved without public participation by the governor-appointed Alaska Education Board last month.
The policy would create two athletic departments in Alaska: one exclusively for students whose gender assigned at birth is female, and another that would be open to all students of all genders. The activities association board is taking public comments on the policy and is expected to consider approving it at its May meeting in Valdez.
The issue of how transgender athletes should participate in school sports has been a hot topic in the United States, and in recent years moves have spread in Republican-controlled states to ban transgender athletes from participating in school sports based on their chosen gender. There are 21 states that have signed such bans into law. An attempt to pass legislation restricting the participation of transgender athletes in school sports failed in the Alaskan legislature last year.
While legislative efforts have stalled, an ASAA policy could affect all high school athletes in Alaska.
ASAA executive director Billy Strickland said the May board meeting would be the final opportunity to create a new league before the start of the next school year in August. The board next meets in October and the federation does not want to make any major changes to the way the sport is governed in the middle of the school year, he said.
The athletic federation’s board of directors passed its existing transgender athlete bylaws in 2016, allowing each school board and district to enact their own policies. Most districts have no policies, and only the Mat-Su Board of Education has issued rules restricting transgender athletes from participating in teams that match their gender identity. The Anchorage School District policy specifically allows transgender athletes to participate in intramural sports “in a manner consistent with their gender identity, which is consistently expressed at school.”
The proposed amendment to the association’s statutes was sent to the school administration in mid-March. Strickland said he’s since received a handful of public comments that he thinks roughly fall into three equal camps: those who agreed with the new policy, those who didn’t, and those who resisted the process which the proposal was advanced .
The federation’s draft policy said it would comply with a request made unanimously by the Alaska Board of Education last month, which called for the state to enact a policy to protect the “integrity of high school girls’ sports.” Supporters of the motion raised concerns about possible advantages transgender girls could have over their cisgender counterparts.
[Alaska education board recommends banning transgender girls from girls sports teams]
The Education Committee’s non-binding decision was added to its three-day agenda without public announcement on the last day of meetings and debated shortly before the committee’s meeting.
James Fields, who has served as chair of the state board of education since 2015, said during an Alaska Senate confirmation hearing Wednesday that adding last-minute agenda items was not a “normal event” but instead that a board member requested resolution that was discussed. State Senator Jesse Kiehl, a Juneau Democrat, said he was “deeply concerned” that the board would approve a resolution without public input.
Strickland said he spoke to officials in Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s administration in February about the idea of banning transgender athletes from competing against cisgender girls. He said it would be possible to create a section just for cisgender girls and a coed section for everyone else. Girls in Alaska already regularly play alongside boys on some football and hockey teams when there aren’t equivalent teams for girls, he said.
Strickland said he knows of only one transgender student who has competed in Alaska high school sports in his nine years with the association. But ASAA doesn’t track how many transgender students compete in school athletics in Alaska, he said.
Democratic Senator Loki Tobin of Anchorage, co-chair of the Senate Education Committee, opposes the association’s proposal and said it was “disturbing” that the state would replace local control over how school districts organize sports. Tobin called the policy “appalling” and said it went against ASAA’s “own organizational values of integrity and inclusivity.”
Palmer’s Republican Senator Shelley Hughes sponsored a bill that stalled last year that would have banned transgender girls from competing on girls’ sports teams. She said a statewide policy is needed to bring consistency to the sport across Alaska.
Hughes also said she wanted to protect what she says was the “original intent” of Title IX, the landmark 1972 law that made sex discrimination illegal in government-funded education programs, and in the process protecting opportunities for girls required to participate in school sports.
The Biden administration last week announced a Title IX proposal that would outlaw outright bans on transgender athletes. ASAA’s proposed policy change says it would comply with all of the Rules of Title IX, and it could be allowed under Biden’s proposed Title IX amendment — which would still allow restrictions on transgender athletes’ participation in school sports to ensure competitiveness .
Lacey Sanders, deputy commissioner for the Alaska Department of Education, said via email that the department is working with the Alaska Department of Justice to understand the implications of proposed federal policy, which has not yet been passed.
“The issue of student sport and issues related to gender criteria and gender identity is fluid and complicated. It includes issues of competition, fairness, student age and maturity, and educational goals,” Sanders said in an email.
Caitlin Shortell, an attorney, said the association’s draft policies are “manifestly discriminatory” against transgender children.
“They’re also violating children’s right to privacy by forcing educators and coaches to identify and segregate transgender youth from their peers, and that’s part of a coordinated nationwide attack,” Shortell said, tying the policy to what she called autonomy with limitations on reproductive rights an “assault” on bodies.
The proposed Board policy does not specify how the new gender rules would be enforced. Mat-Su policy may require a student to produce their birth certificate to determine their “biological sex.”
Critics of a recent Kansas law banning transgender students from participating in girls’ sports have expressed concerns that “genital inspections” could be used to enforce new rules. After public opposition, provisions requiring these types of inspections were removed from similar bills in Ohio and Florida.
Shortell said any measure to verify an athlete’s gender was “offensive” and “invasive” against privacy rights and would affect both transgender and cisgender girls.
Shortell, who sits on the board of directors of nonprofit LGBTQ advocacy group Identity Alaska, said there were some early discussions of litigation against policies she believed were discriminatory, including Dunleavy’s school parental rights bill. But she said the priority for opponents would be to block those policies before they go into effect to avoid a years-long court battle.
ASAA’s board of directors consists of eight members elected by regional athletic associations from across Alaska. A ninth student member attends the meetings but has no voting rights. A simple majority of members is required to approve an amendment to the Association’s Articles of Association, which could come into effect 30 days later.
Seven board members did not immediately respond to a request for comment on how they would vote. When reached by phone, Tim Helvey, a board member and principal at Eagle River High School, said he didn’t have enough information about the policy right now to say if he supported it.
The association was founded in 1957 as Alaska’s governing body for high school sports and activities. Since 1995, ASAA has operated as a private not-for-profit organization with regulatory powers over state high school activities, separate from the state Department of Education and Early Development.
According to ASAA, public comments should be sent to [email protected] by noon on Thursday, April 27. The board released dial-in information online for its May meeting.
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