U.S. Rep. Tom Emmer singles out teenage transgender athlete in social media post

U.S. Rep. Tom Emmer on Friday used his official House Majority Whip social media X account to retweet a post naming a transgender metro-area high school softball player who plays for a team that will advance to the state tournament next week.

“Last night, a team of hardworking female athletes in Minnesota were denied a state title because our state’s ‘leaders’ refuse to stand up for reality, safety, and fairness,” Emmer wrote on X above a post from Riley Gaines, a 12-time NCAA All-American swimmer who’s become one of the faces of the movement to ban transgender athletes from competing in women’s sports.

“This insanity must end,” concluded Emmer, who represents Minnesota’s Sixth Congressional District and is the No. 3 Republican in the U.S. House.

The Gaines post copied by Emmer includes a video showing the player pitching and her name. She is playing under state high school rules set in 2015.

Three metro-area Maple Grove and Farmington high school softball players sued Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison and other state leaders earlier this month in an effort to remove transgender athletes from competing in their sport.

Female Athletes United, the group representing the players, alleges that a decade-old Minnesota policy allowing transgender athletes to compete has created an unsafe and unfair environment for them. The suit focuses on an unnamed player whom the plaintiffs allege was born male.

The Minnesota Star Tribune does not generally name minors involved in pending legal action.

Rep. Leigh Finke, DFL-St. Paul, the first trans person elected to the Minnesota Legislature, called Emmer outing the transgender athlete “gross” and said she feared it makes a target of the athlete and her family.

“This is not a surprise from a politician like Tom Emmer,” Finke said. “He is of the brand of conservative politicians who are willing to put trans people at risk. He’s the whip, so he speaks not just for himself, but for his caucus and his colleagues.

“Whether or not he realizes it, when you put a target on an individual like this, you create a situation where it’s a permission structure. It creates a situation where other people feel entitled to do the same.”

In a text, Emmer spokesperson Casey Hood said: “Today wasn’t the first day this issue was covered, but welcome to the party.” She pointed out that Emmer himself did not name the teenage athlete in his post.

“Again, it’s a shame you all continue to prove your stories aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on,” Hood said.

The suit comes as the debate over whether transgender athletes should participate in high school and college sports has become a polarizing topic, and one in which Republicans have been at the forefront of opposition.

They have an ally in President Donald Trump, who has taken a hostile stance against transgender athletes and earlier this year signed an executive order titled “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports.”

The Minnesota State High School League (MSHSL) has been under investigation by the federal government as a result of Trump’s executive order and could risk losing federal funding. Ellison has sued the Trump administration over the executive order, while state Republicans have tried but failed to pass a bill banning transgender athletes from competing in girls’ elementary and secondary sports.

The U.S. House passed the “Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act” at the start of the year, which Emmer and Minnesota’s three other Republicans representatives supported. A similar version of the bill did not advance in the U.S. Senate.

In 2015, the MSHSL’s board of directors voted to open girls’ sports to transgender student-athletes. The decision took effect for the 2015-16 school year and made Minnesota the 33rd state to adopt a formal transgender student policy.

The MSHSL’s current bylaws allow student participation “consistent with their gender identity or expression in an environment free from discrimination with an equal opportunity for participation in athletics and fine arts.”

Citing the Data Privacy Act, the MSHSL does not require and does not keep records of transgender athletes in the state. Illinois, a state with twice the population of Minnesota, has an estimated 25 transgender athletes out of 133,000 high school athletes, according to the Illinois High School Association.

NCAA President Charlie Baker told a congressional hearing last winter, according to the New York Times, that he believed there were fewer than 10 transgender athletes among the nation’s 510,000 college athletes.

Jim Paulsen of the Minnesota Star Tribune contributed to this story.