No, The State Of Texas Is Not Banning Transgender College Athletes

Recently, several news articles have been published falsely claiming that transgender athletes will be banned from competing in college sports in Texas if Senate Bill 15 is passed. These headlines are incorrect and confusing. I was particularly disappointed to see a headline reading Ban on transgender college athletes poised to become law in Texas shared across several Texas news outlets.

The (what I would consider) misleading title was even used for a video report on the story.

Have you ever clicked on a headline thinking an article is about one subject, only to find out the topic goes in a completely different direction than the headline implied? It's OK to admit we've all fallen victim to clickbait. Over the years of being exposed to it, we have learned how to avoid that trap.

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How do you avoid clickbait?

The number 1 way to know which headlines to avoid clicking is when they're posted by a sponsored website, or the posting page is obviously not a credible news source. We call these articles "fake news."

However, does it get any more disappointing than clicking on an article hosted by a legit news site, and then the article's conclusion doesn't support the headline? Yeah, that's clickbait too, but now we start to question if they are a "legit" news source instead of actually being legitimate.

If the bill isn't banning anything, so what is it doing?

OK, now that the sermon is over, back to the subject. No, Senate Bill 14 isn't banning transgender athletes. It actually is a pretty succinct bill in relation to many laws that are on the books.

If passed, the bill would require transgender athletes to compete with the gender they were assigned at birth. If born male, but now female, you would have to compete against males, and vice versa. Nobody is being banned from college athletics.