This amendment to a Missouri election law puts transgender children on the ballot

Missouri Republicans want to allow local school districts to vote on measures prohibiting transgender girls from competing in girls’ sports.

The provision was added to HB 2140, a Missouri election bill, as an amendment. It passed in the House last week with most Democrats voting against it.

Allowing districts to turn a spotlight on every trans child in their schools takes this issue to a whole new low. How would this not put these children, who are already at a much higher risk of suicide, at even greater risk of bullying?

Lawmakers keep saying how worried they are about the mental health of young people, but apparently they’re not at all worried about the dangers facing some of those young people.

Districts could put the issue to a public vote whether or not any trans child in that district is playing on a sports team. Most have no such children playing on a team, but since this issue polls so well for politicians, that wouldn’t keep the issue off the ballot — or keep any trans kid from being hurt by such a ballot measure.

The Missouri State High School Activities Association, which oversees high school sports in the state, has said that in the last decade there have been only two transgender girls seeking to play on girls sports teams.

“Prohibiting trans girls and boys from school sports will further stigmatize and isolate a group of kids who already experience disproportionately high rates of depression and self-harm,” Quinn Jackson, a family medicine physician in Kansas City, wrote last month in the The Star.

And according to the U.S. Trans Survey, 22% of trans women who were perceived as trans in school were harassed so badly they had to leave school because of it.

But Missouri lawmakers, like Rep. Vicky Hartzler, whose campaign for the U.S. Senate has prominently featured her opposition to young transgender athletes, are benefiting from targeting kids already at risk. Hartzler hopes to ride this issue to Washington, at the expense of vulnerable young Missourians.

Dozens of other states have proposed bills that would discriminate against LGBTQ people. There are six such bills in Missouri.

The proposed amendment to the election bill has to pass a second House vote before it can advance to the state Senate.

Prohibiting two school children in 10 years from playing on their school sports teams is another non-problem the GOP has pushed only because it polls well. Solving non-problems, we grant you, is easier than addressing our many real challenges.

But Missouri lawmakers should be putting the health and well-being of our children ahead of their own political agendas.