Maplewood school district’s policy on transgender athletes clashes with Missouri bill

The Maplewood Richmond Heights school board in March approved a resolution allowing students “to participate in all physical education, athletics, and other extracurricular activities according to their gender identity, without requiring legal or medical documentation.”

Less than two months later, Missouri lawmakers passed a bill banning transgender athletes from participating on single-sex teams that align with their gender identity. Gov. Mike Parson has indicated he will sign the bill into law, which would go into effect in August.

The goal, according to the bill, is “to further the governmental interest of ensuring that sufficient opportunities for athletics remain available for females to remedy past discrimination on the basis of sex.”

School leaders in Maplewood Richmond Heights, including the five school board members who signed the pro-LGBTQ resolution, declined to respond to the state law or answer questions regarding policies for transgender student-athletes in the district.

Advocacy groups have said they plan to fight the legislation in Missouri along with another law that would ban gender-affirming care for minors. The two bills passed by the Missouri Legislature were part of a national effort in Republican-led states to curb LGBTQ rights.

“This denies students the right to a fully expansive education and all the opportunities that come with it,” said Robert Fischer, spokesman for PROMO Missouri. “These types of bills foster a hostile environment for queer and transgender students and puts not only their mental state at risk, but makes them specific targets for harassment and bullying at school.”

If the governor signs the bill into law as expected, legal challenges could delay its implementation.

The U.S. Supreme Court in April allowed a 12-year-old transgender girl in West Virginia to continue competing on her middle school girls sports teams while a lawsuit over a ban in that state continues.

The justices refused to disturb an appeals court order that made it possible for the girl to continue playing on her school’s track and cross-country teams, where she regularly finishes near the back of the pack.

The decision came on the same day the Biden administration proposed a new federal rule that would prevent schools and colleges from enacting outright bans on transgender athletes, but it would allow certain limits to promote fairness or reduce injuries.

At least 20 other states have similar bans on athletic participation for transgender students, according to the pro-LGBTQ group Movement Advancement Project.

Males, as designated on their original birth certificate, can only play on male or coed teams and females can only play on female or coed teams under the Missouri law. Male and female are defined as “an individual’s reproductive biology at birth and the individual’s genome.” There is an exception for females playing on male teams in a sport at the school without a female equivalent, such as football.

Missouri’s law would apply to all public, private and charter schools, as well as public and private colleges. Schools that violate the law would lose all state funding, significantly affecting public school budgets.

It’s unclear if the law would apply to nonprofit leagues like the Catholic Youth Council (CYC), which is run by the Archdiocese of St. Louis and affiliated with Catholic grade schools, or City League in St. Louis, which organizes sports for charter middle schools.

The state law would override a policy from the Missouri State High School Activities Association, adapted from NCAA policy, which allows transgender males to participate in boys sports and transgender females to participate in girls sports after receiving one year of hormone treatments.

No more than seven transgender students in Missouri are believed to have waivers from the high school association to play on single-sex teams, according to testimony on the bill.

There are no student-athletes who identify as transgender at the University of Missouri, according to a spokesman.

It is also unclear how the law would be enforced. The law calls for the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education to set new transgender participation rules for kindergarten through 12th grade school sports, and the Department of Higher Education and Workforce Development to set rules for college sports.

The rules must be set by Aug. 28, and will expire with the law in 2027.

In Kansas, where the state Legislature this year passed a ban on transgender female athletes in girls’ and women’s sports, the high school sports association ruled that schools must review birth certificates prior to team placements. If a birth certificate isn’t available, the student will be examined by a doctor. If neither method settles the issue, then the student could only compete on a boys’ or coed team.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.