Courtesy-Deccan Herald
After its Republican governor signed the restricted bill into law on Tuesday, Florida became the eighth state this year to prohibit transgender girls and women in public secondary schools and universities from participating in girls’ and women’s sports teams.
The action by Gov. Ron DeSantis comes on the first day of Pride Month, an annual celebration of the LGBTQ community that takes place throughout June, and 11 days before the five-year anniversary of the deadly Pulse nightclub shooting, in which 49 people were killed at a popular LGBTQ venue in Orlando.
LGBTQ campaigners slammed the action immediately, with one group pledging to file a legal challenge.
The law requires public secondary school and college sports teams to be identified based on “biological sex,” which prevents trans women and girls from competing in women’s sporting teams.
The measure defines a student’s “biological sex” as the one shown on the official birth certificate at or near the time of birth. While sex is a wide term for physiology, a person’s gender is an intrinsic feeling of identity.
Anatomy, genetics, and hormones may all play a role in deciding the sex indicated on a birth certificate, and there is a wide range of natural variance in each of these categories.
As a result, the terminology of “biological sex,” as employed in this statute, can be too simplified and deceptive.