Florida joins U.S. states banning transgender girls from female sports

Florida on Tuesday became the latest and largest state to ban transgender girls and women from participating in female sports at schools, part of a campaign in statehouses nationwide this year assailed as discriminatory by equal rights activists.

Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is closely aligned with former President Donald Trump, enacted the law on the first day of Pride Month, which celebrates the LGBTQ community.

DeSantis signed the bill at an event at a Christian school in Jacksonville where he was flanked by several teenage women athletes. He said the law, which states participation rules for public high schools and universities, was needed to ensure fairness for women participating in sports across the state.

“I can tell you this: in Florida, girls are going to play girls’ sports and boys are going to play boys’ sports,” the governor said. “We are going to go based off biology, not based off ideology when we are doing sports.”

Supporters of the sports bills say transgender female athletes have an unfair advantage, having been designated male at birth but having since transitioned. Florida’s law defines an athlete’s sex as that stated on official documents at birth.

The law, rushed through the state legislature as an attachment to a charter school bill, passed over the objection of Democrats and civil rights advocates who call bans on transgender girls and women in female sports unnecessary and discriminatory and accuse Republicans of portraying them as a provocation to energize the right wing of their party.

On Tuesday, President Joe Biden issued a proclamation to mark the start of Pride Month, urging Congress to protect LGBTQ people from discrimination by passing the Equality Act and pointing to a lack of protection of their rights in many states.