POLITICS
Mississippi, S. Dakota Pass Anti-Trans Sports Bills
GOP-led State Legislatures move ahead with discriminatory legislation
BY MATT TRACY
Legislation banning transgender
athletes from
participating in girls’
and women’s sports has
passed both chambers in Mississippi
and South Dakota, putting
the states on the brink of becoming
the fi rst two in the nation to
fi nalize such a law this year.
The Mississippi Fairness Act,
which requires schools and universities
to “designate teams by
biological sex,” cleared the lower
house by a 81-28 margin on March
3 after the State Senate approved
the bill last month in lopsided fashion,
34-9. Governor Tate Reeves, a
Republican, is expected to sign the
legislation into law.
Meanwhile, the same kind of bill
is on the way to South Dakota Governor
Kristi Noem’s desk — and she
is vowing to sign it. The legislation
The Mississippi State Capitol in Jackson, Mississippi.
in South Dakots stipulates that
schools and athletic associations
obtain written waivers showing every
student athlete’s “reproductive
biology,” according to NPR.
WIKIMEDIA COMMONS/ MICAHEL BARERA
The bills are two of dozens of
similar pieces of legislation circulating
statehouses across the
nation in the midst of an all-out
attack on transgender athletes —
with girls’ and women’s sports being
the center of attention. At least
60 bills have been fi led across 30
states, with anti-trans sports bills
clearing at least one chamber in
Montana, Tennessee, North Dakota,
South Dakota, and Mississippi,
according to Freedom for
All Americans, which is a bipartisan
group working on securing
non-discrimination protections
for queer Americans. Among other
provisions, the Mississippi bill also
prohibits anyone from questioning
the very nature of the law.
“A government entity, any licensing
or accrediting organization,
or any athletic association or
organization shall not entertain a
complaint, open an investigation,
or take any other adverse action
against a primary or secondary
school or institution of higher education
for maintaining separate interscholastic
or intramural athletic
teams or sports for students of the
female sex,” the bill states.
It is possible that bills such as
the ones in Mississippi and South
Dakota could have a diffi cult time
standing up in court. Last year,
Chief US District Judge David C.
Nye blocked a similar anti-trans
sports bill that was passed and
signed into law in Idaho.
At the very least, advocates say
lawmakers did a poor job designing
the legislation.
“It will be the fi rst anti-trans bill
to pass and become law this year,
though it is so poorly drafted I
believe it is unenforceable,” Chase
Strnagio, deputy director for
Transgender Justice at the ACLU’s
LGBT and HIV Project, said after
Mississippi’s bill passed.
While lawmakers are again
equating “biological sex” to gender
assignments at birth, that is
a misleading term laced with false
assumptions about individuals’
identities. Many of the Republicans
who favored the bill cited the
usual arguments pushed by conservatives
— that transgender individuals
who participate in girls’
and women’s sports are somehow
violating fairness.
“As a father of a daughter, this
bill provides protection and promotes
fairness for all our children,”
Republican State Representative
Nick Bain of Mississippi said in a
tweet after the bill passed the lower
house.
The bill even drew considerable
bipartisan support, with several
Democrats voting in favor of the
bill. Multiple Democrats who voted
for the bill, including Representatives
Jon Lancaster and Cedric
Burnett, did not immediately respond
to Gay City News’ request for
comment on their vote.
Lawmakers are not only targeting
transgender individuals in
the sports world. Montana and
Alabama, meanwhile, have also
seen at least one of their respective
chambers pass legislation restricting
healthcare for trans youth this
year.
A broad range of corporations
and other businesses have typically
voiced opposition to anti-trans legislation
in statehouses, and 2021
is no different. More than 55 companies,
from Capitol One to Apple,
Facebook, PayPal, Microsoft, Uber,
and Amazon have signed a letter
rejecting state-based legislation
targeting trans folks, according to
Freedom for All Americans.
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