News - March 31, 2025 - by Ray Hagar

Selena Torres-Fossett, the chair of the Assembly Education Committee, saw a large group of high school and middle school girls and parents descend on her committee last week, advocating for AB 240, which would ban biological males from participating in Nevada women's interscholastic and collegiate sports.

A ban on transgender athletes in women's sports is a major culture-war cause for many Republicans in the Nevada Legislature. AB240 has 16 primary and co-sponsors, all Republicans.

Torres-Fossett, a Democrat, does not share their view, she said during a recent interview on Nevada Newsmakers.

"During the campaign season, I spent a lot of time knocking on doors, talking to Nevada voters," she told host Sam Shad. "And this is an issue that Nevada voters were not talking to me about.

"They were talking to me about the affordability for housing," she continued. "They were talking to me about the increase in prescription costs. They were talking to me about how the cost of goods here in Nevada has continued to go up.

"Whether or not students identify as a woman in sports was not an issue that Nevada voters were prioritizing," Torres-Fossett said.

"This legislative session, I'm committed to working on legislation, that makes sense for Nevada and will improve the overall quality of life for Nevadans," she said. "And quite honestly, this piece of legislation is not that."

Torres-Fossett, who is a high-school teacher in Las Vegas, was also highly critical of Lt. Gov. Stavros Anthony for leading the charge on the issue. She noted issues involving transgender athletes do not fall under the formal duties of his office -- which includes chairmanships of the Commission on Tourism and the Advisory Board on Outdoor Recreation.

The lieutenant governor also serves as vice chair of the Board of Directors of the Department of Transportation.

"The lieutenant governor's office has other responsibilities that they need to be focusing on, and it's disappointing to see our state resources being allocated toward this political effort, when we have things that Nevada needs," Torres-Fossett said.

Anthony's Task Force

Lt. Gov. Anthony has also created his "Task Force To Protect Women In Sports," holding a rally at the state Capitol last month on National Girls and Women in Sports Day.

Torres-Fossett said Anthony's push to ban transgender athletes is part of his ongoing campaign for higher office.

"Quite honestly, the lieutenant governor's office should be working on small business advocacy, and that's where they should be investing their time, not on creating political rallies for their campaign for their next big office."

Also, The Nevadans for Equal Rights Committee filed an ethics complaint last month against Anthony, alleging his Task Force is a misuse of state resources.

The complaint follows Anthony's admission during a legislative hearing last month that he used government resources, including staff time, supplies, equipment and travel expenses to support the task force, according to a KRNV-Reno news report.

The Equal Rights Committee's stance is that Anthony's Task Force violates Nevada's Equal Rights Amendment approved by voters in 2022.

Last month, however, President Trump signed an executive order to prohibit transgender women and girls from participating in girls’ and women’s sports, as well as their use of women’s locker rooms. Trump's order includes threats to withhold federal grants for non-compliant schools.

GOP rallying point

The transgender-athlete issue became a major rallying point for Nevada Republicans last fall, after a majority of team members on the University of Nevada, Reno's women's volleyball team refused to take the court against San Jose State and forfeited the match because that squad reportedly included a transgender player.

The Nevada/San Jose State volleyball forfeit drew national attention before the November election.

Republicans Tulsi Gabbard -- the current Director of National Intelligence -- plus U.S. Sen. Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma and Nevada GOP U.S. Senate candidate Sam Brown all attended Nevada's volleyball match with Fresno State to support Nevada team members for their stance against San Jose State.

Sparks' Ward 4 City Councilwoman Charlene Bybee, one of Nevada's first scholarship female athletes under Title IX in the 1970s, was also a major supporter of the actions of her alma mater's volleyball team.

Anthony was inspired to create his task force by the Nevada volleyball team, he told the Las Vegas Sun.

A national high school study, using data from the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System, found that 40.7 percent of transgender youth -- grades 9-to-12 -- played on at least one sports team, according to a brief by UCLA's Williams Institute of the School of Law.

Applying that estimate to the population of transgender youth aged 13-17, suggests that as many as 122,000 transgender youth could be participating in U.S. high school-level team athletics, the UCLA Williams Institute brief speculated.

However, at the national collegiate level, the UCLA law brief noted it is "unlikely that transgender athletes make up more than 1.3 percent of the overall college athlete population."

When asked how big a issue the participation of transgender athletes is in Nevada schools, Torres-Fossett said:

"By trade, I'm an educator. This is not an issue that every high school athletics (department) is seeing. But what is an issue is that our athletics (departments) are seeing is the constant challenge of whether or not a student is feminine enough to be on that women's sports team or masculine enough to be on that (men's) team.

"Quite honestly, we're creating a situation where it almost seems like the only possible solution would be to have an adult coach, in the locker room, determining whether or not the genitalia of that student is appropriate for them to compete on that team," Torres-Fossett said.

"Ultimately, this is a decision for coaches to decide what they want to do with their players, and for them to determine if this is a good athlete that deserves to be on their team," she said.

"And this isn't a decision that we should be legislating and definitely isn't something the lieutenant governor has any business discussing," Torres-Fossett said.

No vote was taken on the bill in the Assembly Education Committee at last week's meeting. The bill is not yet scheduled to be considered again in committee.

"I think that this is just causing a distraction from the real issues that Nevadans are facing," Torres-Fossett said.