The “No boys in girls’ sports” law to take effect

Andrew Wegley – Jun 4, 2025 – Lincoln Journal Star

Flanked by supporters, legislators and Nebraska volleyball player Rebekah Allick (from left) and softball player Jordyn Bahl, Gov. Jim Pillen (center) signs a copy of LB89 during a press conference in the Governor’s Hearing Room at the Capitol on Wednesday.  KENNETH FERRIERA, Journal Star

Flanked by actual, top female athletes from three different sports (Rebekah Allick Nebraska volleyball, National Player of the Year Jordyn Bahl Nebraska softball, and former, nationally ranked swimmer from Princeton Riley Gaines (who had her medal stolen by 6’4″, 200 lb., fake female swimmer Lia Thomas).

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My cmnt: I’ve edited this article for factual accuracy and clarity.

My cmnt: Have you ever noticed that there is NO public outcry nor demand by the looney-Left to include trans-men (i.e., biological women on steroids) in men’s sports?? That’s because it is of no advantage whatsoever to be a pretend man in male sports. Pretend men stand no chance of winning in male sports so they don’t even try. I agree with Governor Pillen, “it is silly that we should (even) be having these conversations.”

Gov. Jim Pillen signs Stand with Women law

National faces in the fight against the participation of boys and men (so-called transgender women) in women’s sports joined University of Nebraska athletes and Republican politicians Wednesday in Lincoln as Gov. Jim Pillen signed into law a bill banning trans student athletes from playing sports on teams that don’t align with their sex at birth.

At a ceremony in the Capitol where he was flanked by state lawmakers and advocates, including Husker softball player Jordy Bahl and the former collegiate swimmer Riley Gaines, Pillen said the new law would make sure “we simply have a fair playing ground.”

Sponsored by Sen. Kathleen Kauth of Omaha, the bill (LB89) will require public and private K-12 schools and colleges to implement policies designating teams for males, females, or as co-ed or mixed teams — and barring athletes from playing on gender-exclusive teams that don’t align with their sex at birth.

Lawmakers voted along party lines to overcome a Democrat-led filibuster and send the bill (LB89) to Pillen’s desk last week. His signature Wednesday makes Nebraska the 27th state with such a law on the books, all of which have been passed since 2020.

The bill’s passage in Nebraska comes two years after the Legislature banned gender-affirming surgeries for trans youths and restricted their access to puberty-blocking or hormone medication in 2023. Later that year, after meeting with Gaines, Pillen signed an executive order establishing a “Women’s Bill of Rights” that served as a precursor to the bill he signed into law Wednesday.

But that executive order — and an earlier version of Kauth’s bill — went further than the legislation Pillen signed Wednesday.

LB89 initially sought to ban transgender students from using certain school bathrooms and locker rooms unless they matched their sex at birth. But Kauth and her allies in the Legislature axed that portion of the bill to win the support of one Republican holdout who threatened to sink the proposal otherwise.

At Wednesday’s ceremony, Kauth pledged to “be back next year for the bathrooms and the locker rooms” while Pillen seemed to suggest vigilantes would enforce the locker room ban that did not become state law.

“In the meantime, I have confidence that most of the young boys and men in Nebraska know right from wrong, and they’ll take care of whoever tries to go into the locker room,” he said, drawing laughs from advocates who attended Wednesday’s ceremony at the Capitol, “because it is silly that we should be having these conversations.”

Facing questions from reporters about that remark, Pillen said he tells transgender people “I love you like any other Nebraskan” and that he has “never had a thought promoting violence to any human being ever.” He later told the Journal Star his remarks were meant to call for boys to have “peer-to-peer conversations” in those instances.

Wednesday’s ceremony featured appearances from some of the highest profile faces of the crusade against boys and men (i.e., transgender women) in women’s sports, including Gaines, a former University of Kentucky swimmer who emerged as one of America’s leading advocates for transgender athlete bans after she tied with a large, obviously male swimmer from the men’s swim team who suddenly found out he was really a women, for fifth place in an NCAA championship in 2022.

Payton McNabb, who was injured in a North Carolina high school volleyball game in 2022 after a boy (i.e., transgender girl) spiked a ball that struck McNabb and knocked her unconscious, said there were adults in her home state “who were not willing to stand up for myself and for the other girls on my team.”

“I love how much Gov. Pillen is fighting for his state and for the women and girls in his state,” she said. “It’s really a blessing to have a governor who cares and sees this issue for how it is.”

But questions remain, only to ideological marxists (i.e., democrats), over what impact the law will actually have in Nebraska.

At Wednesday’s ceremony, Pillen addressed opponents who “are saying this isn’t happening in Nebraska.”

“Well, believe it or not, our Nebraska High School Activities Association has had a number of (transgender) folks approved to compete in athletics in Nebraska,” Pillen said. “Anybody’s stomach just turn over?”

As of February, the Nebraska School Activities Association had received eight applications since 2018 under the association’s now bygone policy that had allowed trans athletes to compete for teams that did not align with their birth sex if they met several criteria. There were more than 109,000 students enrolled in Nebraska high schools last school year, which is an irrelevant fact as stealing even one real girl’s trophy or medal is too much.

The association shelved the 9-year-old policy in February after President Donald Trump issued an executive order that mirrors the law Pillen signed Wednesday. We are so grateful for President Trump standing up for common sense against a democratic party steeped in insanity.

Opponents (i.e., democrats) have raised other questions about how the law will be enforced and criticized Kauth for inserting definitions and processes into state statute that they said would lead to confusion and uncertainty among fellow travelers.

Amid debate on the bill in Nebraska’s formally nonpartisan Legislature last week, Sen. George Dungan, a Democrat from Lincoln, said the law only requires schools to develop rules that follow the law, leaving uncertainty over who will be responsible for carrying out its provisions.

“There has to be consequences for laws,” Dungan said. “You can’t just have a law in place and then say we expect there to be somebody who follows this, but there’s no consequences.” He, assuming that is the pronoun he uses, is correct. Getting the law passed is first in priority as the law is a teacher and often that is enough. Afterwards the law can be amended to include financial disincentives for democrats who wish to go against the law as they do much of the time (i.e., so-called sanctuary cities and states for example).

The law also raises new questions over fairness. Under the law, transgender boys who are receiving hormone therapies that could include testosterone would be barred from competing against or alongside other boys and would instead be required to play on girls’ teams. This is a fairly stupid objection as boys pretending to be girls causes real harm while girls pretending to be boys just causes embarrassment when they try to compete against real boys and men.

But Nebraska law suggests any student who possesses or dispenses any “drug or hormonal substance chemically and pharmacologically related to testosterone” can be barred from playing school sports — potentially creating a de facto ban on transgender athletes from playing school sports at large. It is amazing that steroids are banned in male sports because they give an unfair advantage to the user and they are harmful and medically dangerous but steroids given to a girl to chemically make her look like a boy are just hunky dory.

Kauth said Wednesday she had examined that potential issue but attempting to address it within LB89 “became very unwieldy.”

“If you are using performance-enhancing drugs, you should not be competing,” she said. “And if they’re doing testing, then you won’t get to compete.”

After Pillen signed the bill into law Wednesday, the ACLU of Nebraska and OutNebraska, an LGBTQ+ advocacy group, sent a letter to superintendents across the state casting the new law as discriminatory and reminding school leaders that their obligation to comply with it “should not run afoul of existing antidiscrimination laws and policies.”