Tennessee legislation that would withhold funding from school districts allowing transgender students to participate in sports passed in the Senate Education Committee on March 29. If passed into law, Senate Bill 1861 (pdf) would require the commissioner of education to withhold a portion of state education funding if the school refuses to determine the gender of a student participating in sports. “We passed a bill last year that required boys to play boys and girls to play girls in K–12, and this bill is putting teeth into it,” Rep. John Ragan, a Republican, said on the House floor when speaking about the companion House Bill 1895. The bill assigns unspecified financial penalties to the Tennessee law passed in 2021 that prohibited males from playing in female sports. Opposition to the Bill According to organizations such as the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), one of the largest LGBTQ-advocate organizations, the bill is …