"Republicans in the New Hampshire House of Representatives last week narrowly passed a bill targeting transgender student athletes on a party-line vote. Sponsors claim that we need House Bill 1205 in order to protect girls and women who want to play sports in school and to protect Title IX, the 1972 law that prohibits sex discrimination in education. The bill now goes to the Senate.

"I spent six years researching Title IX for a book on its 50-year history. Here’s the problem with HB 1205 and the arguments behind it: Their goal of excluding transgender students is the opposite of Title IX’s goal of including all students in the benefits of education, which includes sports. And if anyone should be targeted for stealing thousands of athletic playing opportunities from girls and women, it should be boys’ and men’s athletics programs, not a very tiny number of transgender students.

"Dividing school sports by sex wasn’t a given when Congress passed Title IX. This was just one organizing structure considered. Some civil rights advocates opposed the idea, knowing from experience that 'separate' is never 'equal.' (It turns out they were right.) The Department of Education considered competing ideas like organizing teams by height, weight, and other factors instead of by sex. Or using an Olympic model in which boys’ and girls’ teams compete at the same time and the joint score determines which school wins a match (which would ensure investment in girls’ sports). Those ideas were ahead of their time, and Title IX advocates settled on dividing sports by sex just to get enforcement rolling."