A Nebraska bill that would bar transgender students from bathrooms, locker rooms and sports teams that correspond with their gender identity has advanced from the first of three rounds of debate — but with a caveat.
Sen. Merv Riepe, who helped tank an effort to pass a similar bill last year, agreed Tuesday to provide the 33rd vote needed to break a filibuster against the bill. But only if the bill’s sponsor agrees to support his amendment to remove language that would ban bathroom and locker room use, leaving only the ban on sports participation. That amendment will be introduced in the next round of debate, Riepe said.
“They’ve agreed to it,” Riepe said of the bill’s main sponsors. “They know if they don’t, I’ll kill it in the next round.”
The bill from Omaha Sen. Kathleen Kauth is a reprisal of one she has introduced repeatedly in recent years. It was billed in 2023 as a companion to another Kauth measure restricting gender-affirming medical care for minors. The medical care bill passed and was enacted, but the bathroom and sports bill failed to advance from committee.
Last year, the measure failed to break a filibuster when Riepe and fellow Republican Sen. Tom Brandt joined with 15 Democrats and an independent in the officially nonpartisan Legislature to kill it.
This year, the measure gained the vocal backing of Republican Gov. Jim Pillen, who placed it among his legislative priorities for the year, and the bill was rebranded as the “Stand With Women” act.
In that vein, lawmakers who supported the measure spent much of the debate arguing that it was needed to protect women’s safety in intimate spaces like bathrooms and locker rooms and to guard women’s sports from ostensibly stronger and faster transgender competitors.
“This is not fairness,” Republican Sen. Loren Lippincott said of transgender women competing in women’s sports. “It’s a setback for women’s sports.”
Opponents argued that the bill is discriminatory and targets a population already vulnerable to bullying and abuse.
Some also took issue with the idea that women need protection from transgender people.
“As a woman, I don’t need protection from transgender women,” Sen. Wendy DeBoer said. “If I need protection — if I need it at all — it’s from a cisgender man.”
Kauth pushed back aggressively, sometimes using descriptions offensive to the transgender community.
“If your definition of women is men who believe that they’re women, then you’re incorrect,” she said. “A trans woman is a man.”
Protesters against the bill wandered the rotunda just outside the legislative chamber doors during the debate. But they remained more subdued than in years past, when hundreds of protesters chanted against anti-trans measures. About 30 supporters of the bill wearing shirts that read “Stand With Women” filled the seats of one of the chamber’s public viewing balconies.
Following the vote, at least one person yelled from the balcony, “Shame on you! Shame on you guys!”
