Florida law vetoes transgender athletes from girls’ school sports. The Republican governor defends the measure because it protects “the integrity” of the competitions.
The governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis , Tuesday signed a controversial law that prohibits transgender girls and women to participate in women ‘s sports school level arguing that way “integrity” is protected from these competitions.
At a public event in Jacksonville (North Florida), DeSantis signed SB 1028 and highlighted that now in Florida “the girls are going to play with the girls and the boys are going to play with the boys.”
Only transgender elementary school girls are saved from the ban. In the rest of school and women’s sports competitions sponsored by educational centers, only athletes who were born women may participate.
The law passed despite the objections of its opponents the parliamentary process. The two chambers of the State Congress are dominated by the Republican Party, to which DeSantis belongs, who is a supporter of former President Donald Trump and in this legislature has carried out a battery of ultra-conservative laws.
Opponents of this law argue that it is not only discriminatory but unnecessary and warn that it will further alienate a community, the transgender, which is already marginalized.
The Florida Senate Democratic Caucus said in a statement Tuesday that with this law its Republican colleagues rejected “both science and reason” and attacked “openly minors in the LGBTQ + community without a single element to prove that there is a problem.” with transgender people in female school sports.
No record of complaints
Democrats noted that there has not been a single case of complaint or incident involving the participation of a transgender athlete in school competitions.
They also stressed that Republicans to help the very young should be concerned and act on “incidents of harassment, violence and suicidal tendencies” that are growing in the state and criticized the “degrading” language used in the drafting of SB 1208. .
Similar legislation
Prior to this law, Florida school sports association regulations existed for the participation of transgender athletes.
Florida thus follows in the footsteps of Idaho, Tennessee, Arkansas and Mississipi, where similar legislation has already been approved, in several cases challenged before the courts, as will happen with SB 1208, as announced by the Human Rights Campaign.
The Human Rights Campaign, the largest political lobbying organization for the LGBTQ community in the country, announced today that it will file a lawsuit “to block this arbitrary and discriminatory prohibition.”
