HARRISBURG, Pa. (WHTM) — After two months of inaction, Pennsylvania Republicans have forced a vote on a bill banning transgender girls from participating in women’s sports.

The bill, known as Senate Bill 9, passed the State Senate in May with a bipartisan vote. However, Republicans said the bill failed to progress after it got stuck in the House Education Committee.

On Monday, Rep. Barb Gleim (R-Cumberland) unveiled a discharge resolution to move the bill to a House vote. A discharge petition allows lawmakers to force a bill out of committee and onto the floor for a vote with 25 signatures.

“We all know that the bill is a bipartisan bill,” Gleim said. “If we are able to lift this bill out and vote on it, it would go to the governor.”

Transgender girls would be prohibited from participating in school athletic teams designated for women under the legislation. For this purpose, it would define a person’s sex as the biological distinction between male and female, based on reproductive biology and genetic make-up.

The bill follows one of President Donald Trump’s main policy goals. In February, the president signed an executive order expanding Title IX protections to ban the participation of transgender girls in women’s sports.

Since then, the federal government has investigated schools and athletics programs it deems in violation of the policy.

One of those schools was the University of Pennsylvania, which a federal civil rights case found violated the rights of female athletes by allowing Lia Thomas, a transgender swimmer, to compete in 2022 for the Ivy League school in Philadelphia.

Under an agreement to end the case, the school banned transgender women from its women’s sports and restored all individual Division I swimming records and titles to female athletes who lost out to Thomas.

A public debate over the participation of transgender athletes exploded in the years following Thomas’ participation on the swim team. A number of states have since banned transgender athletes from scholastic athletics.

“They’re adhering to the president’s executive order,” Gleim said. “If they don’t, we could run the risk of losing federal funding, just like with UPenn.”

While a few Democrats in the Senate joined Republicans to pass the bill, it’s unclear how it would stand in the house, especially given its Democratic majority. Shapiro has also previously admonished lawmakers for proposing legislation restricting the participation of transgender students in sports.

In 2021, he said such bills are “designed to discriminate against transgender youth who just want to play sports like their peers.”