Senate OKs Blueprint bills after debate over transgender scholastic athletes

Senate Minority Whip Justin Ready (R-Frederick and Carroll) on the Senate floor Tuesday discussing his amendment he introduced on the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future bill. (Photo by William J. Ford/Maryland Matters)

The Senate gave final approval Tuesday to its version of a bill making changes to the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future, the state’s 10-year, multibillion-dollar education reform plan.

The 33-13 vote sets up a conference committee with the House, which has approved its own version of the Excellence in Maryland Public Schools Act. The Senate also amended the House bill Tuesday to mirror its own version and now sends both bills to the lower chamber.

While it was largely expected, Tuesday’s party-line Senate vote was delayed for almost 25 minutes while senators debated an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to add language to the House bill that would prohibit transgender females from participating in women’s sports in school.

“This amendment is to simply ensure that there is a level playing field for girl’s sports at the high school level by allowing only biological girls to play on a high school interscholastic or intramural varsity or junior varsity team that is designated as a girls, female, or women’s team or sport,” said Sen.  Justin Ready (R-Frederick and Carroll), the Senate minority whip and sponsor of the proposed amendment.

SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE

“We want to protect the crucial role that women’s sports have played in development of young women,” said Ready, who said his wife participated in track and field in high school and at Salisbury University, where they met.

Sen. Ron Watson (D-Prince George’s), the floor manager for the bill, said he supported the concept of Ready’s amendment but that “it’s not germane to this bill.”

But Sen. Mary Beth Carozza (R-Lower Shore) supported the amendment, talking about her time as a tennis player in high school and at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. She also read a letter from a volleyball player at her alma mater, Stephen Decatur High School in Berlin.

“While the other team was warming up, my teammates and I immediately noticed the strength and speed with which the biological male hit the volleyball,” Carozza read. “It was apparent that the skills of the biological male surpassed anyone else on the court. My teammates and I were not only intimidated, but we feared for our safety.”

Sen. Mary Washington (D-Baltimore City and Baltimore County), the first openly gay African-American member of the Maryland General Assembly and still only one in the Senate, also read a letter from a high school student. But this one highlighted came from the only female player on a co-ed soccer team who said she was “bullied, ridiculed and harassed for six years.”

“If you want girls sports to be more fair, there are other ways to do it. But it’s my belief that the people who don’t want transgender women in sports and pass bills … should instead focus on providing more support for women in these other spaces,” Washington read, before voting against the amendment.

“In not allowing transgender girls to participate in women’s sports, we continue a long history of policing women’s bodies,” Washington said.

Even Senate President Bill Ferguson (D-Baltimore City) offered a few words before he voted against the amendment.

“When I’ve had conversations with transgender young people who are trying to find themselves and live in a community, the pain and suffering that so many of them have felt, feeling out of place and not having a spot in this world is unbelievably painful,” he said. “So, when I think about how we should be educating kids, it should be about what is in the best interest of children.”

The Senate voted 27-17 to reject the amendment, before voting to make the House bill conform to the Senate version.

Local school officials have long asked for more flexibility in the implementation of the Blueprint, now in its third year, and with the state facing a $3 billion budget shortfall this year, many targeted the school reform plan as an area for savings. Gov. Wes Moore (D) in January proposed a bill that deferred the start of some programs in the Blueprint and would slow the pace of some budget planned budget increases.

The House approved its version of the Blueprint reform bill earlier this month, rejecting cuts in per pupil funding and eliminating a four-year pause on the implementation of teacher collaborative time, both elements in the governor’s plan. The House voted for a one-year pause in the start of collaborative time.

The Senate bill is more closely aligned with the governor’s bill on the per pupil funding and collaborative time provisions.

House members are expected to reject the Senate’s changes to the House bill, creating the need for a conference committee to work out compromise language between the two chambers. That agreement will need to come before Monday night, the closing day of the 2025 General Assembly session,