Missouri House passes permanent ban on trans athletes in school sports

Jack Harvel, The Kansas City Star on Feb 26, 2026

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The Missouri House passed a bill permanently extending its ban on transgender athletes competing in school sports consistent with their gender identity.

The athletics ban comes two weeks after the Missouri House permanently extended its ban on gender-affirming care for minors, and both will codify moratoriums on transgender issues passed in 2023.

Missouri’s moratorium on participation in sports was set to expire on Aug. 28, 2027. As the House did with its permanent ban on gender-affirming care for minors, the law simply strips a provision that sets an expiration date.

The bill will now head to the Senate, a chamber that’s been marred in bitter partisan fighting this session.

Missouri, along with 27 other states, has banned participation in sports in a sex besides the one listed on an individual’s birth certificate. Missouri allows girls to compete in boys sports if there is no girls program available and coed sports.

Rep. Brian Seitz, a Branson Republican and the bill’s sponsor, said the bill protects women’s sports from competitors with an innate advantage.

“When scientific biological differences between the sexes are ignored or not taken into consideration, women and girls suffer and become less than, rather than equal,” Seitz said. “Years of training, practice and hope are extinguished as biological men or boys take the hard-earned medals or placement of our daughters, sisters, granddaughters and nieces.”

Seitz pointed to the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s updated policy barring transgender athletes in women’s sports, which it adopted a day after an executive order by President Donald Trump threatened funding for educational programs “that deprive women and girls of fair athletic opportunities.”

Seitz also appealed to public opinion, which favors requiring transgender athletes to compete on teams that match their sex assigned at birth.

Democrats said the bill targets a small and vulnerable population in Missouri. When Missouri’s moratorium on transgender student athletes went into effect in 2023, the Missouri State High School Athletics Association had approved a total of 13 applications for transgender athletes to compete in interscholastic competition since 2016.

“What we really need to do to protect the fragile lives that are entrusted to us and make sure they grow, make sure they’re successful, make sure that we don’t squash them. We bring a whole state government down on 12 little kids,” said Rep. Doug Clemmons, a St. Ann Democrat.

Rep. Wick Thomas, a Kansas City Democrat, quoted the president of the NCAA, who in 2024 told the U.S. Senate that he’s aware of fewer than 10 transgender athletes who were currently involved in college sports.

“You would think it was an astronomical crisis by how much time this body spends on this topic,” Thomas said.

Other Democrats raised concerns about how the bill could impact cisgender women who are accused of being transgender.

“We are creating opportunities for people to judge our children’s bodies on the athletic field. And then, do you want to know what’s even scarier, who is going to be the judge?” Rep. Elizabeth Fuchs, a St. Louis Democrat, said. “Do you want to be the one who’s in charge of the pants policing?”

Seitz closed the debate on the House floor, accusing Democrats of straying from the original intent of Title IX, the civil rights law that prohibits sex-based discrimination in education and athletics.

“Inclusion should not come at the expense of competitive equality for women,” Seitz said.

PROMO Missouri, a public policy and LGBTQ advocacy organization, accused Seitz’s bill of “hijacking our kids’ joy” in a statement about the bill.

“If Representative Setiz cared about women in sports, he would spend less time thinking about children’s bodies and work to solve actual challenges women athletes have asked lawmakers to address: sexual harassment and assault, uneven implementation of Title IX, pay equity – the list goes on,” Shira Berkowitz, senior director of public policy and advocacy for PROMO Missouri, said in a statement.

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