Colleagues,

I will soon be introducing legislation that will amend the Pennsylvania Human Relations Act to restore the traditional interpretation of sex as a protected class. Prior to a 2023 change made by regulation on the part of the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission, the law’s prohibition on sex discrimination was held to apply to biological sex. This clarity provided governments, schools, and other public accommodations with the clear understanding needed to avoid litigation and to ensure their operations were free from sex discrimination. By unilaterally changing the law through regulation, the PHRC not only usurped the General Assembly’s proper role in making new law, but put many organizations across the Commonwealth in an impossible position of compliance within a shifting legal environment and with fundamentally incompatible goals. To use one example, a school that attempts to avoid discrimination on the basis of gender identity by allowing a biological male to change in a girl’s locker room is then engaging in sex discrimination against all of those girls by violating their privacy in a single sex space. At the moment, the school cannot have any confidence on which approach the law demands.
 
Our communities and our schools should not serve as testing grounds for this legal conflict, and our children should not be victims of its misapplications. By restoring the statutory focus to solely be on eliminating discrimination on the basis of biological sex, we can provide clarity for schools and other accommodations to protect our children and to make individual accommodations for other students that do not come at the cost of their classmates.
 
Please join me in cosponsoring this important legislation.