AUGUSTA — Lawmakers deadlocked in votes on bills seeking to prohibit transgender athletes from competing in girls sports during a committee meeting Tuesday night, setting up what is likely to be an intense debate as the bills now move to the full Legislature.

The Judiciary Committee voted 6-6 on two bills that would cut state funding to schools that allow transgender athletes to participate in girls sports, with one Democrat, Rep. Dani O’Halloran of Brewer, joining Republicans in support of the bills.

A third bill that would require sports teams to be either male, female or coed and that would prohibit transgender athletes in girls sports was defeated 5-7. Republicans were in support and Democrats opposed, though O’Halloran said she would support the bill with an amendment and registered an “ought to pass as amended” report on the bill.

At the same time, the committee voted overwhelmingly against a bill that would remove consideration of gender identity from the Maine Human Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination based on gender identity. State officials cite the law as the reason transgender athletes are allowed to compete in girls sports.

And they voted against bills that would have eroded transgender rights for students more broadly by restricting which bathrooms they can use and requiring schools to identify students by the name and gender listed on their birth certificates.

The bills were among the most contentious of the legislative session and come as the Trump administration is suing Maine because it allows transgender athletes to compete in girls sports. The administration has also threatened to pull federal funding, saying that Maine is violating the federal antidiscrimination law known as Title IX.

State officials have countered that they would be violating the Maine Human Rights Act by not allowing transgender athletes to compete in a way that affirms their identity and that President Donald Trump’s executive order banning transgender athletes from girls sports is not legal.

Democrats who voted against the bills focused on transgender athletes said Tuesday that the legislation would be harmful to students, difficult to enforce and expressed concerns that the proposal for schools to have coed teams is not realistic. Republicans said the bills protect girls sports and private places.

“I think (these bills) are very harmful for girls,” said Rep. Amy Kuhn, D-Falmouth, co-chair of the committee. “I think they are harmful for students who are transgender and nonbinary, and I think they’re harmful for the school community because when adults authorize targeting of kids, it makes it unsafe for everybody and erodes everyone’s sense of belonging, especially during a time of development when kids are really vulnerable.”

Sen. Anne Carney, D-Cape Elizabeth, who also chairs the committee, recalled her daughters’ experience signing up for middle school lacrosse and then finding out that their school didn’t have enough money for a coach. “When there is no money, the school will not have a team, and that’s my concern about the suggestion there could be coed teams,” Carney said.

Rep. Jennifer Poirier, R-Skowhegan, countered that some schools have worked around those kinds of concerns by partnering with surrounding districts, saying some schools in her area recently partnered to put together enough students to form a hockey team when they couldn’t field teams individually. “There are some work-arounds schools can do to make these things happen,” Poirier said.

CONCERNS ABOUT ENFORCEMENT

Rep. Ellie Sato, D-Gorham, also raised concerns about how schools would enforce laws around transgender athletes, saying that girls are already subject to pressure about looking and acting a certain way. “I’m very concerned that for girls who do not present feminine attributes, whether they’re cis or trans, will be targeted regardless because they don’t fit into the model of what we’re told a girl should look like,” Sato said.

Rep. Liz Caruso, R-Caratunk, sponsored LD 868, the bill requiring sports teams to be either male, female or coed and prohibiting transgender athletes in girls’ sports. The bill also would require schools to designate restrooms and changing rooms for use by males or females only, based on sex assigned at birth.

“The legislation does treat everyone the same and gives everyone the option of a biological sex or coed team,” Caruso said. “I think it will provide opportunities for all students to have more options.”

Caruso said her bill does not aim to subject girls to greater scrutiny about their bodies and said that a student’s birth sex would be determined by a physician who has to fill out a sports medical form. “No one’s inspecting someone’s body. … We don’t want students to go through that,” she said.

O’Halloran was the only Democrat on the committee who voted for LD 233 and LD 1134, two bills that would prohibit schools that receive state funding from allowing transgender athletes to participate in girls sports, and said she would have supported Caruso’s bill if it were amended to strike language allowing for legal remedies against schools for violating the provisions of the bill.

“I look at what’s going on around how we have transgender girls on girls teams and girls on girls teams. … I’m wondering, ‘Where does that leave girls?'” O’Halloran said during committee discussion. “I feel terrible about all of this, as I’m sure all of us do, and my heart goes out to everybody.”

The committee also voted 11-2 to reject the change to the Maine Human Rights Act after the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Mike Soboleski, R-Phillips, told the committee that he sought to change the law’s definition of sexual orientation to include gender identity, in keeping with previous iterations of the law, rather than keep the current separate provisions for gender identity, and lawmakers questioned what the purpose of the change would be.

An attorney for the Maine Human Rights Commission told the committee that the change would likely result in confusion for individuals and businesses about what is and isn’t protected under the law.

“I don’t think the amendment changes any coverage, it just rearranges language back to the way it was before we tried to clarify things in 2019,” said Barbara Archer Hirsch. “I think that going back and forth would create a lot of confusion and you would be getting more and more calls from folks not knowing what’s covered and what is not.”