WASHINGTON (AP) — The Washington Commanders' hopes of returning to the site of their former home at RFK Stadium cleared a significant hurdle Friday when the District of Columbia Council approved the legislation.
The bill advanced by a 9-3 vote, but it still must be approved a second time by the council before being sent to Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser.
Bowser negotiated an initial plan with Commanders owner Josh Harris in April, with the team contributing $2.7 billion and the city investing roughly $1.1 billion for the stadium, housing, green space and a sportsplex on land bordering the Anacostia River.
“We are one step closer to securing a sure path to transforming 180 acres of land, which has been our promise to D.C. residents all along,” Bowser said Friday.
The Commanders currently play at Northwest Stadium in Landover, Maryland, but aim to open a new venue in 2030.
“Today's approval by the council is transformational for D.C. and brings the Commanders back to our spiritual home,” Harris said in a statement. “Like many fans, RFK was the site of memories that fueled my love for this team and this city. Now we're closer than ever to reigniting that energy for a new generation.”
The bill still faces a process called second reading and must be approved again in a vote that is expected in September. And its advancement Friday was not without some reservations. Councilmember Robert White Jr., who opposed the bill, had three amendments rejected. But one of them, proposing stronger penalties if the team fails to deliver on development commitments, drew a sympathetic response from the panel.
“I want to see us do better than where we are, between now and second reading,” said Councilmember Charles Allen, who supported the bill at this stage. “I think you're going to hear enough voices on this dais that want to see us continue to work on this between first and second reading, to continue to make this better. ... The promises made have to be delivered, and we need to safeguard (so) that happens.”
Councilmembers Zachary Parker and Janeese Lewis George supported the measure after announcing earlier in the day that a contract agreement between the Commanders and union partners had been signed.
The ownership group led by Harris has been considering locations in Washington, Maryland and Virginia since buying the team from Dan Snyder in 2022. Congress passed a bill transferring the RFK Stadium land to the city that was signed by then-President Joe Biden in early January.
That paved the way for possibly replacing the old stadium with a mixed-use development, including the new playing field for the Commanders.
However, President Donald Trump last month threatened to block federal support for the stadium project unless the team reverted to its former name, Redskins. The debate over the team's nickname did not come up during Friday's council meeting, although Councilmember Anita Bonds did stress the need to pass this legislation as a way of avoiding possible federal intervention.
“The land was transferred to us via a bill that passed Congress and signed by President Joe Biden two weeks before he left office. I don't need to remind everyone that times are very different now," Bonds said. "There is new leadership in our federal government, a new party controlling Congress, and perhaps others across the country and region that may be waiting for us to not approve this deal, so that they can take over. And trust me — if that happens, D.C. gets nothing."
AP NFL: https://apnews.com/hub/nfl
FILE - Washington Commanders controlling owner Josh Harris, center, is passed a helmet to sign next to District of Columbia Mayor Muriel Bowser, right, after announcing a new home for the NFL football team on the site of the old RFK Stadium, Monday, April 28, 2025, at the National Press Club in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, File)
FILE - People make their way to RFK Stadium in Washington before the start of an MLS soccer match between D.C. United and Toronto FC, Saturday, Aug. 5, 2017. D.C. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais, File)
WASHINGTON (AP) — Becky Pepper-Jackson finished third in the discus throw in West Virginia last year though she was in just her first year of high school. Now a 15-year-old sophomore, Pepper-Jackson is aware that her upcoming season could be her last.
West Virginia has banned transgender girls like Pepper-Jackson from competing in girls and women's sports, and is among the more than two dozen states with similar laws. Though the West Virginia law has been blocked by lower courts, the outcome could be different at the conservative-dominated Supreme Court, which has allowed multiple restrictions on transgender people to be enforced in the past year.
The justices are hearing arguments Tuesday in two cases over whether the sports bans violate the Constitution or the landmark federal law known as Title IX that prohibits sex discrimination in education. The second case comes from Idaho, where college student Lindsay Hecox challenged that state's law.
Decisions are expected by early summer.
President Donald Trump's Republican administration has targeted transgender Americans from the first day of his second term, including ousting transgender people from the military and declaring that gender is immutable and determined at birth.
Pepper-Jackson has become the face of the nationwide battle over the participation of transgender girls in athletics that has played out at both the state and federal levels as Republicans have leveraged the issue as a fight for athletic fairness for women and girls.
“I think it’s something that needs to be done,” Pepper-Jackson said in an interview with The Associated Press that was conducted over Zoom. “It’s something I’m here to do because ... this is important to me. I know it’s important to other people. So, like, I’m here for it.”
She sat alongside her mother, Heather Jackson, on a sofa in their home just outside Bridgeport, a rural West Virginia community about 40 miles southwest of Morgantown, to talk about a legal fight that began when she was a middle schooler who finished near the back of the pack in cross-country races.
Pepper-Jackson has grown into a competitive discus and shot put thrower. In addition to the bronze medal in the discus, she finished eighth among shot putters.
She attributes her success to hard work, practicing at school and in her backyard, and lifting weights. Pepper-Jackson has been taking puberty-blocking medication and has publicly identified as a girl since she was in the third grade, though the Supreme Court's decision in June upholding state bans on gender-affirming medical treatment for minors has forced her to go out of state for care.
Her very improvement as an athlete has been cited as a reason she should not be allowed to compete against girls.
“There are immutable physical and biological characteristic differences between men and women that make men bigger, stronger, and faster than women. And if we allow biological males to play sports against biological females, those differences will erode the ability and the places for women in these sports which we have fought so hard for over the last 50 years,” West Virginia's attorney general, JB McCuskey, said in an AP interview. McCuskey said he is not aware of any other transgender athlete in the state who has competed or is trying to compete in girls or women’s sports.
Despite the small numbers of transgender athletes, the issue has taken on outsize importance. The NCAA and the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committees banned transgender women from women's sports after Trump signed an executive order aimed at barring their participation.
The public generally is supportive of the limits. An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll conducted in October 2025 found that about 6 in 10 U.S. adults “strongly” or “somewhat” favored requiring transgender children and teenagers to only compete on sports teams that match the sex they were assigned at birth, not the gender they identify with, while about 2 in 10 were “strongly” or “somewhat” opposed and about one-quarter did not have an opinion.
About 2.1 million adults, or 0.8%, and 724,000 people age 13 to 17, or 3.3%, identify as transgender in the U.S., according to the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law.
Those allied with the administration on the issue paint it in broader terms than just sports, pointing to state laws, Trump administration policies and court rulings against transgender people.
"I think there are cultural, political, legal headwinds all supporting this notion that it’s just a lie that a man can be a woman," said John Bursch, a lawyer with the conservative Christian law firm Alliance Defending Freedom that has led the legal campaign against transgender people. “And if we want a society that respects women and girls, then we need to come to terms with that truth. And the sooner that we do that, the better it will be for women everywhere, whether that be in high school sports teams, high school locker rooms and showers, abused women’s shelters, women’s prisons.”
But Heather Jackson offered different terms to describe the effort to keep her daughter off West Virginia's playing fields.
“Hatred. It’s nothing but hatred,” she said. "This community is the community du jour. We have a long history of isolating marginalized parts of the community.”
Pepper-Jackson has seen some of the uglier side of the debate on display, including when a competitor wore a T-shirt at the championship meet that said, “Men Don't Belong in Women's Sports.”
“I wish these people would educate themselves. Just so they would know that I’m just there to have a good time. That’s it. But it just, it hurts sometimes, like, it gets to me sometimes, but I try to brush it off,” she said.
One schoolmate, identified as A.C. in court papers, said Pepper-Jackson has herself used graphic language in sexually bullying her teammates.
Asked whether she said any of what is alleged, Pepper-Jackson said, “I did not. And the school ruled that there was no evidence to prove that it was true.”
The legal fight will turn on whether the Constitution's equal protection clause or the Title IX anti-discrimination law protects transgender people.
The court ruled in 2020 that workplace discrimination against transgender people is sex discrimination, but refused to extend the logic of that decision to the case over health care for transgender minors.
The court has been deluged by dueling legal briefs from Republican- and Democratic-led states, members of Congress, athletes, doctors, scientists and scholars.
The outcome also could influence separate legal efforts seeking to bar transgender athletes in states that have continued to allow them to compete.
If Pepper-Jackson is forced to stop competing, she said she will still be able to lift weights and continue playing trumpet in the school concert and jazz bands.
“It will hurt a lot, and I know it will, but that’s what I’ll have to do,” she said.
Heather Jackson, left, and Becky Pepper-Jackson pose for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
Heather Jackson, left, and Becky Pepper-Jackson pose for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
Becky Pepper-Jackson poses for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
The Supreme Court stands is Washington, Friday, Jan. 9, 2026. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
FILE - Protestors hold signs during a rally at the state capitol in Charleston, W.Va., on March 9, 2023. (AP Photo/Chris Jackson, file)
