Oct. 20, 2025
HARRISBURG – Rep. Jamie Walsh (R-Luzerne) last week introduced legislation that would amend the Pennsylvania Human Relations Act to restore the traditional interpretation of sex as a protected class to avoid legal confusion and provide greater clarity for those attempting to comply with the law.
Walsh noted prior to a 2023 change made by regulation on the part of the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission (PHRC), the law’s prohibition on sex discrimination applied to biological sex. This clarity provided governments, schools and other public accommodations with the clear understanding needed to avoid litigation and 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 in the state in an impossible position of compliance within a shifting legal environment and with fundamentally incompatible goals,” said Walsh. “For 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 about 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,” continued Walsh. “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 make individual accommodations for students that do not come at the cost of their classmates.”
House Bill 1956 is now awaiting assignment to a House committee.
Representative Jamie Walsh
117th Legislative District
Pennsylvania House of Representatives
Media Contact: Tricia Lehman
717-772-9840
tlehman@pahousegop.com
RepWalsh.com / Facebook.com/RepJamieWalsh