Parents Bill of Rights Act
Floor Speech
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Mrs. BOEBERT. Madam Chair, this amendment is simple and straightforward. My amendment simply requires notification to parents if their child's school operates, sponsors, or facilitates athletic programs or activities to permit a person whose biological sex is male to participate in an athletic program or activity that is designated for biological females.
Madam Chair, women's sports are under attack. Woke policies backed by far-left extremists who demand male participation in female sports are completely delusional and contradict science. This allows men who identify as women to undermine legitimate women's accomplishments. American women and girls deserve to compete against biological women in sports, opportunities for athletic scholarships, and their rightful places on the winner's podium without the fear of being sidelined and beat out by a biological male.
This was on complete display when William Thomas, a biological man who previously competed in men's swimming, stole Emma Weyant's first- place trophy at the 2022 NCAA Division I Women's 500-Yard Freestyle Final.
As a competitor in men's swimming from 2018 through 2019, Mr. Thomas ranked 554th in the 200-yard freestyle and 65th in the 500-yard freestyle. After deciding to compete against women, this mediocre male athlete, Mr. Thomas, ranked fifth in the 200-yard freestyle and won the 500-yard freestyle.
Mr. Thomas stole Emma's championship trophy and took former Olympic swimmer Reka Gyorgy's spot in the 2022 NCAA Division I swim meet.
Last Congress, I led a couple of dozen Members in introducing a resolution honoring Emma Weyant as the rightful winner of the 2022 NCAA Division I women's 500-yard freestyle race.
I am also a cosponsor of Representative Steube's bill, H.R. 734, the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act of 2023.
Madam Chair, I refuse to allow our children and grandchildren to be groomed by big corporations, schools, and politicians and to think it is okay for men to compete in women's sports.
Again, my amendment simply requires notification to parents if their child's school allows males to participate in female-designated sports. I hope that we could all come to agree that parents have the right to know this before it occurs.
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Mrs. BOEBERT. Madam Chair, I yield myself the balance of my time.
Madam Chair, we have so many people who see the idiocy in men pretending to be women and stealing opportunities from females. These girls practice their whole lives and sacrifice their bodies with strains and other injuries in sports at times only to be outpaced by a biological male. I think it is very common sense for parents to simply be notified that this is taking place.
There is Federal funding going to our public schools. If we are going to see this extremism take place in our public schools, I believe we have some sort of nexus with that to at least say parents have a right to know what is going on and that it is not being taken from them.
Other than this very simple, commonsense amendment, I am more in favor of abolishing the Federal Department of Education and getting the Federal Government completely out of public schools, but we are not there right now. We do fund public schools, and there is a mess going on there. Our children are hurting and suffering because of it.
Madam Chair, again, I urge my colleagues to support this simple, commonsense amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.
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Mrs. BOEBERT. Madam Chair, I rise in favor of my amendment, which will require schools to notify parents if they allow biological males to use restrooms or changing rooms designated for biological females.
Throughout our debate today, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have continued to mischaracterize this bill as extreme. They harp on the same talking points, saying that this bill is looking to ban books, censor curriculums, and punish teachers. I would like any child's pornographic books to be banned, but that is not exactly what we are talking about here in this amendment.
All the while, under Democrat control, we have seen public K-12 schools promote: critical race theory, teaching our children to hate their country and to hate their fellow classmates simply because of the color of their skin; radical gender ideology; and even drag shows to impressionable young children. That is what is extreme.
A school in my home State of Colorado has even changed a child's gender pronouns and preferred names and kept that information from the child's parents.
Speaking as the mother of four boys and a soon-to-be grandma, enough is enough. I don't send my boys to school to receive indoctrination from the woke mob or be sexualized by groomers. If they are, I sure as heck want to know about it and have the right to speak up, and so do these parents.
Let me set the record straight. House Republicans want parents to be involved in their child's education. We want to take control back as parents of our children's education rather than leaving it to partisan politicians or unelected bureaucrats. We don't want to send the FBI after them as domestic terrorists.
We want to foster an active learning environment, not shut schools down and enforce outdated and unnecessary mask and vaccine mandates on our children. We want children to feel safe at school and not pave the way for school administrative staff to hide a sexual assault from parents, like we saw in Loudoun County.
Less than 2 years ago, about 30 miles from here, a ninth-grade girl was sexually assaulted by a man wearing a skirt in the women's restroom at school. This male was allowed to follow the victim into the restroom because of Loudoun County Public Schools' inclusive transgender bathroom policies.
When the father of the victim came to a school board meeting to protest these policies that caused his teenage daughter to be raped, he was arrested after an altercation with a woman who said that she didn't believe his daughter was raped. The superintendent also defended the school's transgender bathroom policy at that meeting.
The man in the skirt was found guilty of two counts of forcible sodomy, a count of anal sodomy, and a count of forcible fellatio. He was also charged with the sexual assault of another student that occurred months later at a different Loudoun County school.
The left's ideology is far more delusional, and it is dangerous. These inclusive policies have paved the way for sexual predators to use the left's definition of gender to take advantage of their victims. Unfortunately, this is just one example of many biological males using bathrooms to assault women and children.
Madam Chair, my amendment would grant parents the right to know if schools that their children are attending are forcing their children to share vulnerable spaces with potential predators.
Madam Chair, I urge my colleagues to support my amendment, and I reserve the balance of my time.
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Mrs. BOEBERT. Madam Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.
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