KC Mayor Lucas decries MO legislature’s push to restrict transgender student-athletes
While visiting Jefferson City on Tuesday, Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas sat in front of a packed Missouri House hearing room and urged lawmakers to oppose a set of bills that would ban transgender athletes from women and girls’ sports.
“I look at the children in this room, and you can see from the capacity, and I want to make sure that they have a place where they feel welcomed,” Lucas said. “I want to make sure they have places where they don’t feel like they need to hate themselves, to feel marginalized, to feel like there is no reason to be alive. That happens with legislation like this.”
The three bills were among eight under consideration by the Missouri House General Laws Committee that target LGBTQ rights. Other bills expected to be considered late Tuesday evening seek to prohibit gender-related medical procedures for minors or restrict drag show performances.
For more than four hours on Tuesday, people, one by one, walked to the microphone and told committee members that the bills targeting transgender athletes were dangerous. Some were LGBTQ kids or parents. Others were activists, parents and business leaders.
An 11-year-old transgender boy from St. Louis told the committee that it makes him feel good to play sports with his friends. The bills wouldn’t help ensure fairness — it would hurt kids who want to play with their friends, he said.
“How fun would it be if you couldn’t play sports with your friends all because your government thought an eight-year-old was going to take your kid’s trophy and therefore should not be allowed to play sports?” the boy asked lawmakers. “It just honestly seems like you guys have more important things to worry about than an 11-year-old playing sports.”
Tuesday’s marathon hearing, which became tense at times, comes as Missouri leads all other states in the number of anti-LGBTQ bills filed, according to the American Civil Liberties Union, which tracks the legislation nationwide. Missouri Republicans have filed an onslaught of at least 27 bills targeting the community, accounting for about 21% of all anti-LGBTQ bills across the country.
Supporters of the bills focused on sports argued the legislation was a matter of fairness, helping ensure athletes who were assigned female at birth are not at a physical disadvantage. Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft, a Republican, told lawmakers that he was there to protect girls’ sports, a familiar refrain among conservatives who supported the measure.
“I’m a father of a 10-year-old girl. I want to make sure that she has the opportunity to compete and be the best that she can do and compete in a somewhat fair arena,” he said.
The issue is unrelated to Ashcroft’s official duties, which mainly involve overseeing Missouri elections. His comments are the latest sign that he’s making appeals to conservatives ahead of a potential 2024 run for governor.
The first three bills heard by the committee Tuesday all seek to ban transgender student athletes from competing on sports teams that match the gender they identify with. One, filed by state Rep. Brian Seitz, a Branson Republican, would ban transgender kids from women and girls’ sports in public and private schools and colleges.
The two other bills, one sponsored by state Rep. Jamie Burger, a Benton Republican, and another sponsored by state Rep. Bennie Cook, a Houston Republican, would strip state aid from public and charter schools that allow transgender kids to compete in women and girls’ sports.
“I think that men’s bone structure is more dense, their musculature is stronger and they can, for the most part, run faster, jump higher and even lift more than most females,” Seitz said at the hearing.
But, to the people who testified against the bills, the legislation was dangerous to LGBTQ kids and to Missouri as a whole. They said lawmakers were targeting the transgender community while only a handful of transgender kids compete in Missouri sports.
“Every time we even have this discussion, there is a group of potential employees who won’t come here because they feel that Missouri is a bigoted and backward state,” said Shannon Cooper, a former Republican member of the Missouri House who was lobbying for the Kansas City Chamber of Commerce.
This story was originally published January 24, 2023 at 8:43 PM.
