A friend of mine came out as trans about a year ago. Earlier this year, she signed up to play on the girl’s field hockey team with her friends. Then, the night before her first game, her parents received a phone call from the school board. On the phone call, they informed her parents that she would not be permitted to play in the game the following day due to a state policy against transgender people playing sports.
Her parents were outraged by this response, especially as she had been practicing with her team this whole time and no one ever mentioned anything. Her parents insisted on reading the school board’s policy themselves. Afterward, they consulted with a trans rights organization, who found a loophole in the wording that made it so the policy only explicitly applied to high schoolers. Since she was still in middle school, she would be allowed to play.
However, unless the law is changed before she reaches high school, once she is in high school she will not be permitted to play anymore. She and her parents have made the decision to go public with the discrimination she is facing, in the hopes of changing the laws that bar her from sports.
She is not the only person experiencing this type of discrimination. Many states have banned transgender sports, thus intentionally excluding countless people. This is hateful and discriminatory and has to change.