The Senate on Saturday rejected an amendment to a far-reaching voting bill that would have barred transgender females from playing in girls’ and women’s sports, a provision that President Donald Trump had demanded be included in the legislation.
The amendment to the Save America Act, which the chamber has been debating since Tuesday, would have amended Title IX, the landmark 1972 law prohibiting discrimination based on sex at education institutions that receive federal funding. The amendment was sponsored by Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Alabama), a Trump ally who has repeatedly pressed the issue.
Saturday’s vote to advance the amendment required 60 votes under Senate rules. It failed in a party-line vote, with 49 Republican votes in favor and 41 Democrats against it. Several members of both parties were absent.
The Trump-backed voting bill would require voters to prove they are U.S. citizens before registering to vote and to show photo identification when voting, among other provisions.
Trump has demanded that Republicans amend the bill to ban transgender women from participating in women’s sports, restrict gender-transition care for children and ban most voting by mail.
Tuberville’s proposal was attached to an existing amendment to the legislation from Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Missouri), which includes provisions that would restrict gender-transition care for children and severely restrict voting by mail. The Senate has not yet voted on whether to advance Schmitt’s amendment.
Trump has said he wants the bill, which passed the House last month, to be approved by Congress before November’s midterm elections. He has threatened never to endorse any Republican who votes against it and said he will not sign any other legislation into law until the bill reaches his desk.
However, the legislation has no apparent path to passing. Senate Democrats have vowed to block the bill, which they warn would make it harder to vote.
Republicans, who control the Senate, do not have the 60 votes they need to overcome a Democratic filibuster. Nor do they have enough votes to attempt a riskier gambit that some Republican senators favor: attempting to exhaust Democrats by forcing them to speak on the Senate floor for weeks to block the bill, known as a “talking filibuster.”
Tuberville, a retired college football coach, said on the Senate floor ahead of Saturday’s vote on his amendment that Democrats’ anticipated opposition to his measure was “ludicrous.”
“Let the people see you vote against women in this country to have the same rights as men when it comes to athletics,” Tuberville said. “Please do that so we can put your picture on television.”
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-South Dakota) told reporters earlier Saturday that the issues being brought forth in Tuberville’s proposal “are overwhelmingly supported by the American people and issues on which there is … broad support among, certainly, our caucus.”
Sixty-nine percent of Americans — including 41 percent of Democrats — say transgender athletes should be allowed to play only on sports teams that match their birth gender, according to a Gallup poll last year. Twenty-four percent of Americans say they should be allowed to play on teams that match their current gender identity.
Republicans have described the Save America Act’s changes as necessary to prevent undocumented immigrants from voting, but noncitizens rarely register to vote or cast ballots. When noncitizens find themselves on the voter rolls, it is often because of administrative mistakes. In one of the most comprehensive reviews of voter registration by noncitizens, a federal judge found in 2018 that at most 39 noncitizens got on the voter rolls in Kansas over almost two decades.
Trump has argued the voting changes will help Republicans politically, telling House Republicans last week that passing the bill would “guarantee the midterms.”
Democrats have warned the bill would make it easier for Republicans to interfere in the midterms, pointing to a provision that would give the Department of Homeland Security access to states’ voter rolls.
Theodoric Meyer contributed to this report.
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