Oklahoma, Arizona governors sign transgender sports bans
PROTECTED CONTENT
If you’re a current subscriber, log in below. If you would like to subscribe, please click the subscribe tab above.
Username and Password Help
Please enter your email and we will send your username and password to you.
SEAN MURPHY
Associated Press Writer
OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — Republican governors in Oklahoma and Arizona both signed bills into law on Wednesday that prevent transgender girls and women from competing on female sports teams, joining more than a dozen other states with similar laws.
Flanked by more than two dozen young female athletes, including his 14-year-old daughter Piper, Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt signed the measure, dubbed the “ Save Women’s Sports Act.”
“This bill, the Save Women’s Sports Act, to us in Oklahoma is just common sense,” said Stitt, a first-term Republican who is running for reelection. “When it comes to sports and athletics, girls should compete against girls. Boys should compete against boys. And let’s be very clear: That’s all this bill says.”
Until two years ago, no state had passed a law regulating gender-designated youth sports. But the issue has become front and center in Republican-led statehouses since Idaho lawmakers passed the nation’s first sports participation law in 2020. That law is now blocked in court, along with another in West Virginia.
The Oklahoma bill, which took effect immediately with the governor’s signature, applies to female sports teams in both high school and college.
The new law was quickly panned by civil rights groups as unnecessarily targeting a group of people who already are marginalized.
Oklahoma’s governing body for high school sports, the Oklahoma Secondary Schools Activity Association, has had a policy in place since 2015 addressing transgender athletes’ participation in sports, but OSSAA spokesman Van Shea Iven said no school has ever requested enforcement of the policy for a male student transitioning to female.
There are also few transgender athletes in Arizona schools. Since 2017, about 16 trans athletes have received waivers to play on teams that align with their gender identities out of about 170,000 high school athletes in the state, according to the Arizona Interscholastic Association.
Outside the room where Stitt signed the bill, 26-year-old Cara Kleber, who is transgender, held a sign that read: “How does it feel bullying kids needing support?”
In Oklahoma, several supporters of the measure said they were convinced to vote for it after University of Pennsylvania swimmer Lia Thomas, a trans woman, won a title earlier this month at the national NCAA Women’s Division I championship.
Some opponents had raised concerns about the NCAA pulling sports tournaments from Oklahoma, including the Women’s College World Series held each year in Oklahoma City, but Stitt said he wasn’t concerned.
Also on Wednesday, Ducey signed a measure outlawing abortion after 15 weeks if the U.S. Supreme Court allows it. The Arizona abortion legislation mirrors a Mississippi law now being considered by the nation’s high court. The bill explicitly says it does not overrule a state law in place for more than 100 years that would ban abortion outright if the Supreme Court overrules Roe v. Wade, the 1973 case that enshrined the right to abortion in law.
