The Texas Legislature this week approved a bill meant to ban trans girls from competing on female sports teams, despite one Oak Cliff lawmaker’s attempts to stop it.

Once Gov. Greg Abbott signs it into law, House Bill 25 will allow athletes in kindergarten-12th grade to compete only on teams corresponding with the gender they were assigned at birth.

Sign up for our newsletter!

* indicates required

The law was pushed by Republicans hypothesizing that cisgender girls could be shoved out of sports by trans kids who could be unfairly taller or stronger. The Texas GOP first exhibited angst about trans kids with the Texas Legislature’s failed “bathroom bill,” in 2017.

While lawmakers were debating the so-called “transgender sports bill,” the Texas Child Welfare Agency removed a web page containing resources for LGBTQ+ youth, in a move that appears politically motivated.

Opponents say the law codifies bigotry and causes harm with its anti-trans rhetoric alone.

Among them are Rep. Jessica Gonzalez, a Democrat whose district includes part of Oak Cliff.

She told CBS Austin that the website removal drove home that intent.

“It’s cruel, and I believe that it was taken down during suicide prevention month or awareness month, and it just shows who this bill is actually targeting,” she told the TV station. “The people who support this legislation, authored the bill, claim that it’s to protect women in sports, but in reality we know who it’s targeting, and it’s targeting transgender kids once again.”

Gonzalez stated during the session that the bill bullies trans kids, KVUE reported.

“Here we are again debating their lives, debating their dignity, letting them know that they are second class, that they are ‘the other.’ That’s not the kind of Texas we want to be,” she said.

Gonzalez was also key among the quorum-busting Democrats who fled the state in an attempt to kill Republican-led legislation to restrict voting in Texas. She was criticized for going to Portugal during those 38 days this past summer, and she told the Dallas Morning News later that she’d gotten married there.