The Wisconsin LGBTQ+ caucus introduced legislation Tuesday that would update state statutes to reflect a new national marriage equality law and criticized a bill that would restrict transgender women and girls from participating in women’s sports. The state-level marriage bills were announced on the one-year anniversary of President Joe Biden signing the Respect for Marriage Act — a law granting federal recognition of same-sex marriage that gained bipartisan support in Congress under the leadership of Wisconsin Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin. The anti-trans sports bill received a public hearing in front of a Senate committee later the same day.
The first of two marriage-related proposals is a constitutional amendment that would remove language from the Wisconsin Constitution that defines marriage as only between one man and one woman. The language was added into the state constitution in 2006 after 59% of voters voted to approve the amendment.
“2026 would be the 20-year anniversary of this discriminatory language being in our state constitution,” Sen. Mark Spreitzer (D-Beloit) said at a press conference. “If we act now, if we pass this constitutional amendment on first consideration this legislative session, we have the opportunity to let the people of Wisconsin repeal it before we hit that embarrassing 20-year anniversary.”
Constitutional amendment proposals must be passed in two consecutive legislative sessions before going to voters for final approval.
A second proposal would update Wisconsin state statutes related to marriage and parenting to ensure that same-sex and different-sex couples are treated equally under the law. Specifically, the bill would change references to “husband and wife” in state statute to be “spouse” or “spouses” so that it includes both same-sex and different-sex married couples.
The bill would make that change to statutes on issues including recreational licenses and income tax, insurance coverage, retirement or death benefits, medical assistance and parentage and family law.
The bill would also recognize legal parentage for same-sex married couples. It would clarify the right of married couples to jointly adopt children, for one spouse to adopt the other spouse’s child and to jointly have a child through artificial insemination of one of the spouses. It would also clarify the presumption that two people who have a child within their marriage are the parents of that child.
Jaime Gaffke said during the press conference that the legislation is important to ensure that her family is protected. She said her marriage to her wife, Ruth Vater, became officially recognized in the state of Wisconsin following the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, but following the ruling there was still the need to ensure that Vater had legal parental rights for their children.
Gaffke said Vater is now the legal parent of both of their children, but “due to gender, and language in the state statutes, we continue to protect ourselves legally with parentage orders, and the need to go to court to secure parental rights for Ruth for both of our children.”
“We want to ensure that nothing could get in the way of the strength of our family and the safety of our family,” Gaffke said. “We are so proud to be here to help guide Wisconsin in ungendering their state statutes, removing marriage inequality from the state constitution once and for all, so that our family can be safe, our children can know that if something were to happen to one of us, they would be safe and secure in their family and protected under state law and under the state constitution.”
When asked about Republican support for the proposals, Spreitzer noted that Reps. Todd Novak (R-Dodgeville) and Joel Kitchens (R-Sturgeon Bay) signed on as cosponsors of the bill in 2019.
“We have had some Republican support for implementing marriage equality in the past, obviously it has not become law in past sessions, but we will continue to work with our Republican colleagues,” Spreitzer said. “We know that this is becoming an issue that can be bipartisan.”
He pointed out that the federal Respect For Marriage Act was passed by a bipartisan group of lawmakers and signed into law by President Joe Biden a year ago.
During the press conference on the bills, Democratic lawmakers also called attention to a pair of bills that target young transgender people that were heard by the Senate Mental Health, Substance Abuse Prevention, Children and Families Committee Tuesday.
“What should be a happy day in introducing these marriage equality bills, instead it’s a day where our transgender community has to come push back on the hateful rhetoric that Republicans have put forward, once again, to try to deny our transgender community their rights,” Rep. Melissa Ratcliff said.
The bills — SB 377/AB 378 and SB 378/AB 377 — would bar transgender girls and women from participating in women’s sports. The bills passed the Assembly in October in a party line vote.
Specifically, the bills would bar transgender girls and women from participating in women’s sports in public and voucher schools and in University of Wisconsin campuses and require schools to designate their teams into one of three categories: “males,” “females,” and “males and females.” The bill would also define “sex” as the sex determined at birth by a physician and reflected on the birth certificate.
The bills are part of a slate of measures that Republicans have introduced this legislative session that target LGBTQ people. One bill that would have banned gender affirming medical care for transgender minors was recently vetoed by Gov. Tony Evers.
As Republicans have introduced and advocated for the bills, Evers has repeatedly said that he would veto any bill that “makes Wisconsin a less safe, less inclusive, and less welcoming place for LGBTQ people and kids.”
“Republicans know all too well that these bills will be vetoed but continue to push their culture wars targeting Wisconsin’s transgender youth,” Ratcliff said. “They’re trying to score political points by marginalizing our vulnerable youth.”
The bill authors — Rep. Barbara Dittrich (R-Oconomowoc) and Sen. Dan Knodl (R-Germantown) — argued that the bills are necessary to ensure that there is fairness in women’s sports. Opponents of the bills say they exclude transgender youth from sports and could cause harm.
Tessa Jade Price, who is a transgender woman and works with Trans Advocacy Madison, said that there are already some instances where co-ed teams have been created but that doesn’t make the legislation inclusive.
“Look at the participation rates of those coed options. Are they competing in anything substantial? Do they even have enough people to make a team? Most of them don’t,” Price said. “It’s a way to make a separate but equal situation where you’re able to say this is the trans people and there’s like three of them and hopefully they can form a basketball team or something and that’s not the same thing as inclusion and that is discriminatory.”
Wendy Strout, a representative for the Human Rights Campaign, said that transgender students, like all students, benefit from participating in sports.
“Allowing them to participate in athletic activities consistent with their gender identity in no way disadvantages their fellow students,” Strout said. “Further attempting to separate transgender youth from their peers is impractical, unfair and unnecessary.”
Strout also said that the legislation could be discriminatory and unconstitutional. An injunction against an Idaho law, similar to the Wisconsin bills, was recently upheld by a federal appeals court.
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