South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem (R) said Monday her state was “celebrating” International Women’s Day by passing legislation to block biological males from joining female sports teams.
The governor announced via Twitter she is “excited” to sign the bill into law.
The legislation, which passed the state Senate by a 20-15 vote margin, will require athletes in state schools to provide information regarding their biological sex as well as their age and whether they are taking steroids, according to The Hill.
H.B. 1217 — “an act to promote continued fairness in women’s sports” — will legally bar any students at state-funded institutions from joining a sports team that does not directly correspond with their biological birth sex.
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The leftist American Civil Liberties Union, which promotes the untruth that “trans girls are girls” with no “unfair advantage in sports,” condemned the legislation as a bill that “aims to ‘promote fairness in women’s sports’ yet would actually undermine sports for all people, harm athletes who are transgender, and cost South Dakota millions of dollars in the name of ‘problem solving’ where a problem doesn’t actually exist.”
“South Dakota already maintains separate sports teams for boys and girls and has a policy for including transgender athletes consistent with gender identity,” the ACLU continued. “There has been no dominance by transgender athletes, no threat to sports, and no other problems in the over 6 years since the policy was adopted.”
The passage of the bill in South Dakota came the same day President Joe Biden signed an executive order establishing a so-called “Gender Policy Council” in the White House. The federal group will, according to The New York Times, “seek to advance ‘gender equality and equity’ in both domestic and foreign policy across government.”
Biden signed an executive order on his second day in office mandating all educational institutions receiving federal funding allow biological males to join female sports teams, use ladies’ locker rooms and restrooms, and be eligible for women’s scholarships.
When asked by a reporter what Biden’s message is to school officials and politicians dealing with concerns about transgender female athletes — that is, biological males — competing alongside biological female athletes, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said, “The president’s belief is that trans rights are human rights,” according to Fox News.
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Furthermore, on Monday, the executive director of Biden’s Gender Policy Council, Jennifer Klein, signaled the administration is open to adding a third gender option to federal identification documents.
Klein told a reporter that the White House is “very inclusive in our definition of ‘gender’ and we intend to address all sorts of discrimination and fight for equal rights for people, whether that’s LGBTQ+ people, women, girls, uh, men.”
Biden spokesperson Matt Hill told The 19th the president “remains committed to advancing state and federal efforts that allow transgender and non-binary Americans to update their identification documents to accurately reflect their gender identity.”
As conversation over sexual and gender identity continues to escalate, it’s worth noting that Vice President Kamala Harris has added her “preferred pronouns” of “she/her” to her Twitter bio.
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