‘Stop hateful bills targeting transgender athletes’

Becky Sauerbrunn called for an end to “hateful bills targeting transgender athletes” in an op-ed for a newspaper in her home state of Missouri.

Transgender women and girls are “not a threat to women’s sports,” the U.S. women’s national team captain wrote in the piece published Sunday by the Springfield (Mo.) News-Leader.

The state Senate is considering legislation that would ban transgender girls from girls’ sports teams. While similar legislation failed last year, it has strong support this year, the Columbia Missourian newspaper reported.

Public high schools in the state already bar transgender girls from competing on girls’ teams unless they already have undergone at least a year of hormone therapy and are taking medication to maintain their hormone levels.

“The bills up for discussion in the Senate this week seek to solve a problem that simply doesn’t exist, and instead are sidelining youth from an outlet that brings them joy, connection and purpose,” Sauerbrunn wrote in her scathing rebuke.

Sauerbrunn, who has appeared in 212 games for the USWNT since 2008, has “faced countless challenges to gender equity in sport,” but the inclusion of transgender women and girls is not among them.

Rather, the…