In the past week, more than 600 Minnesota Family Council supporters contacted their state senators asking them to support school choice and girls’ sports, and those actions had results! On Thursday the Minnesota Senate approved a bipartisan education budget bill that empowers families with school choice options and protects athletic opportunities for female athletes in Minnesota!

The bill includes the language from Senator Carrie Ruud’s Save Women’s Sports bill that would preserve women’s sports by ensuring that biological males are not allowed to compete in female athletics and clarifies that any school that allows male athletes to compete on girls’ sports teams is in violation of Title IX and existing Minnesota laws that protect athletic opportunities for women and girls.

The bill would also create Education Savings Accounts (ESAs) that would equip parents to pursue educational opportunities that fit their family’s values and their children’s educational needs. Under the ESA program, when a parent chooses to withdraw their child from public school, the child’s share of state education assistance would be deposited into a savings account that parents would be able to use for tuition and fees at a different school, online learning, instructional material, or other educational expenses.

These provisions are good news for Minnesota’s families! They recognize that parents are the ones who are ultimately responsible for their children’s education and equip them to pursue an education that is the best fit for their students, and they recognize the biological differences between men and women and preserve fairness and opportunities in light of those differences.

The bill faces an uphill battle to become law. The provisions to protect women's sports and school choice are not included in the House version of the bill, and Senator Chuck Wiger, ranking DFL member of the Senate Education Finance and Policy Committee issued a statement saying that he hopes to see these provisions removed in the House and Senate conference committee. But this bill is still a milestone — this is the furthest that legislation to protect women’s sports has ever gotten in Minnesota and it will play a vital role in future efforts to preserve athletic opportunities for women and girls in our state!

(Image: Minnesota Senate Republicans, Flickr, CC BY 2.0)