On Wednesday, the Texas state senate passed Senate Bill 2905, which removes a passage from a previous law granting exception use of certain steroids in high school athletes if they have a valid medical reason. The bill could effectively ban transgender athletes from competing in high school sports, because as CNN points out, transitioning often includes steroid use.

Many see the bill as a response to 17-year-old Mack Beggs winning the girls' Class 6A Region II state championships earlier this year. Mack is a transgender student who, because of a Texas law saying athletes must compete as the gender they were assigned at birth, was forced to compete in the female wrestling division.

“I think they're harping on it because they don't understand and they're afraid to learn,” Mack told Teen Vogue in a previous interview, addressing the state’s decision to make him compete in the girls’ division. “They don't want to change their point of views and values on what they see — that society is changing. That's how it's always been.”

But many in the Texas senate maintain that this bill is a safety precaution, citing, as Republican state senator Bob Hall told the Texas Tribune, the need to address “individuals who…are taking steroids, then make sure, as a result of that, the events remain safe and fair.” But Democrats in the state senate let it be known that they saw the bill as an offense to one group above all: transgender students.

“This bill would permit the UIL ... banning athletes like Mack because of the argument that their health-based treatment would create an unfair advantage and therefore discriminate against trans athletes considering most trans athletes don’t have immediate access to have their birth certificates change[d] appropriately,” said Sylvia Garcia, a Democrat state senator from Houston who urged her colleagues to vote no on the bill.

Mack told Teen Vogue that transgender students competing in sports does not make the competition unfair.

"There wasn't any unfair advantage," he said. "We're all on the same playing field; we're all at the same weight. It's just how you train and how many hours you put into your training. That all factors into how you compete and how you look."

The bill passed 22–8.

Related: Transgender Wrestler Mack Beggs Talks About His Controversial Victory