Law and Gender: A Bad Match Made in Texas

HB 229 moves to the Texas Senate

HB 229, introduced by Representative Ellen Troxclair and backed by other supporters, seeks to narrowly define terms like “male,” “female,” “boy,” “girl,” “mother,” “father,” “man,” and “woman” in Texas law. They’re calling it the “Women’s Bill of Rights,” but don’t be misled—this bill does not create a single new right or protection for women. Instead, the bill is a thinly veiled swipe at trans Texans that could end up hurting women as well as trans folks.

Instead, HB 229 attempts to put into law rigid definitions of sex that reduce a person’s identity solely to their reproductive capacity—whether or not they produce eggs or sperm. When pressed to cite actual scientific sources supporting this framework, Rep. Troxclair read several paragraphs she claimed as evidence, yet failed to name their origins or offer transparency. This ignores the decades of scientific evidence that supports expansive expressions of sex in humans and across species – opting for a political statement in its place.

HB 229 includes two pages of legislative findings that claim the bill is necessary to enforce sex-based separation in spaces like sports teams, prisons, domestic violence shelters, rape crisis centers, locker rooms, and restrooms, using the language of protection to justify state-sanctioned discrimination. The bill frames the continued separation of people in these spaces by so-called “immutable biological differences” as the only way to protect women and girls. But instead of addressing the real sources of harm—violence, sexism, and abuse of power—HB 229 shifts the blame onto transgender, intersex, and gender expansive people.

HB 229 has already passed the Texas House and was heard in the Senate State Affairs Committee. The debate has made clear that this bill is designed to lay the legal foundation for denying trans and gender diverse Texans documents that reflect their identities, limiting access to services, and reinforcing systemic discrimination.

Despite its name, the “Women’s Bill of Rights” does nothing to advance the rights or safety of women in Texas. Instead, it uses the language of women’s rights as a vehicle for an exclusionary, deeply harmful agenda. It erases the full spectrum of gender identity and expression, and it pushes definitions that can hurt all Texans—especially those who don’t conform to narrow, outdated ideas of what a man or woman “should” be.

This is a direct attack—not just on trans people, but on the beauty of diverse gender expressions of all God’s people.

For more clips of testimony and debate on HB 229 in the House and Senate, check out our YouTube playlist.