Photo via AP Photo/Mark Humphrey
Friday at 4 p.m. Governor Bill Lee tweeted, “I signed the bill (SB 228) to preserve women’s athletics and ensure fair competition…”
Summarizied, SB 228 requires transgender students in middle and highschool to participate in sports under their assigned sex at birth.
Similar bills are being proposed in over 20 states.
This bill, sponsored by Senator Joey Hensley, is aimed specifically at transgender girls, stating, “allowing boys [who identify as female] to compete in girls’ athletic competitions discriminates against girls by regularly resulting in boys displacing girls in competitive events and excluding specific and identifiable girls from opportunities to compete at higher levels and from public recognition critical to college recruiting and scholarship opportunities that should go to those outstanding female athletes.”
Lee has stated that allowing transgender females to participate in female sports would put “a glass ceiling back over women that hasn’t been there in some time.”
LGBTQ+ activists state that the bill is discriminatory against transgender children and teenagers and that it violates Title IX of federal education law prohibiting sex discrimination. Bill advocates claim that it protects women’s sports.
Advocates have not been able to present a situation where there has been an issue of transgender girls in female sports, stating that it may not be a problem now but that it supposedly will be soon.
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