Posted on 03/30/2021 8:43:20 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
A few weeks ago, South Dakota’s Governor Kristi Noem tweeted, “In South Dakota, we’re celebrating International Women’s Day by defending women’s sports!” She was referring to the state’s “Women’s Fairness in Sports” bill, which would prohibit biological males from competing in female athletics. She then added, “I’m excited to sign the bill very soon!”
As it turns out, she wasn’t so excited after all. After the legislature passed the bill, the Republican governor vetoed it. More specifically, she issued what’s known as a “style and form veto,” asking the legislature to modify the bill. The changes she requested not only gut the bill, rendering it ineffective in its original intent of protecting girls and women, but also do great damage to the legislative efforts in a number of other states.
Portions of the bill, she claimed, “create a trial lawyer’s dream and include lawsuit opportunities that don’t need to be there . . . We could pass a law, get punished, and face litigation for nothing but a participation trophy.” That claim is somewhere between dubious and disingenuous. The South Dakota bill is similar to laws already passed in Idaho and Mississippi and introduced in a number of other states. The Idaho legislation was also backed and defended by 14 states’ attorneys general by means of an amicus brief.
Noem, however, is worried about the NCAA (the governing body for major college athletics). She told Tucker Carlson, “This bill would only allow the NCAA to bully South Dakota, and it would actually prevent women from being able to participate in collegiate sports.” So among the “style and form” changes she requested is that the bill would only prevent biological males from competing against girls in elementary and high school athletics, not at the college level.
But the NCAA has no policy that the South Dakota bill would violate. While the NCAA allows men who have surgically or chemically transitioned to compete in women’s sports (and offers regulations to ensure what they claim is “fair”), as Margot Cleveland points out at the Federalist, “nothing in … NCAA policy requires a college or university to treat a male student-athlete as female.” If they did, they’d lose all the Christian colleges that are part of the NCAA.
Also, the NCAA has no legal standing at the state level, nor does it prevent athletes from schools that do not allow males to compete as women from their events. In response to the Idaho and Mississippi laws passed last year, the NCAA offered a harshly worded denouncement, but nothing with legal bite.
Further, as Alexandra Desanctis reports at the National Review, Gov. Noem “altered the bill’s language to allow athletes to compete based on biological sex ‘as reflected on the birth certificate’ or an ‘affidavit’…” In other words, all it would take for a male to compete against females is “appropriate paperwork changing his legal records to match his gender identity.”
Most pointedly, Noem removes a provision that gives female athletes a course of action if they believe they have been “deprived of athletic opportunities as the result of having been displaced by a biological male.” As a legal advisor told me yesterday, a right with no recourse is no right at all. Not to mention, the bill would also give South Dakota schools the ability to retaliate against female athletes who complain.
The Alliance Defending Freedom’s General Counsel Kristin Waggoner summed up the whole debacle this way:
“Gov. Noem has offered a hollow substitute for the urgent protections for women’s sports that the South Dakota Legislature sent to the governor’s desk . . . By stalling her support, attempting to dodge the legal conflict, removing protections for collegiate athletes, and eliminating a female athlete’s legal remedy when her rights are violated, Gov. Noem . . . has downplayed the injustices that girls and women are already facing when they are forced to compete against males.”
So, what’s really behind this whole story? Time and again in states like North Carolina, Indiana, and elsewhere, we’ve seen the enormous corporate pressure brought to bear when it comes to LGBT issues, and we’ve seen state officials tempted to cave in face of that pressure. Now, the address on your credit card may very well be out of South Dakota. Since the 1980s, the banking industry has played a major role in South Dakota’s economy, and many banks are committed virtue-signalers on LGBT issues. Not to mention, South Dakota’s tourism industry would be helped by regional and national NCAA tournaments. What’s really at play here, most likely, is the same corporate pressure that other states have faced.
But the pressure can be weathered. Governor Noem’s about-face makes it that much harder for the governors in Arkansas and other states who are currently debating similar legislation. Even worse, it undermines several years of thoughtful, pointed effort to defend the rights of women in sports and elsewhere. If you are a South Dakota voter, please, call the governor and ask her to do the right thing. If you’re not a South Dakota resident, be assured, this issue will be coming to a state near you, soon enough.
“Will the Governor of South Dakota Protect Female Athletes?”
Evidently not, as she was happy to let the bill lapse as long as it had some teeth in it. On to better candidates for the top job, we don’t need another McCain.
what a load of biased and self-righteous crap
LGBT is one big mafia and racketeering enterprise.
Amazing that after thumbing her nose at all the Covid Karens for a whole year, that she would then fold like a cheap tent when confronted by the lavender mafia.
She vetoed a bill that was deeply flawed. This is just another case of a bad bill with a title people wouldn’t dare veto. “Child Protection Act”, that actually calls for child molestation, but who would dare be against that??
I’m all for letting biological males compete in women’s sports.
Let the democrats and the women who support the democrats’ agenda, suffer the consequences. Let’s see how many women continue to support the democrat agenda, after they’ve been disenfranchised from fair competition in their sports. Women wanted equality and equity in sports, so, why not biological males who ‘feel like a woman’?
South Dakota voters will decide her future fate.
But she is finished on a National level.
Noem Nikki Haley-ed herself.
I would never vote for her on a Presidental Ticket.
I don’t get it.
What the heck is the problem with stating that xx’s on one, xy’s on the other when it comes to any sports that the state regulates/funds.
Disappointed in her. Of course the tranny lobby was going to try to ruin SD women athletes and SD women’s college athletics, but Noem should have waited, gotten together with other governors and brought it to court...and they probably would have succeeded. She sure shouldn’t have just given in and undermined all the other governors.
That is really amazing. Someone who had it all just threw it all away. How is it possible for someone to be so stupid?
Credit cards are out of S. Dakota because of usury laws and lack of consumer protections. Banks may posture, but they aren’t going to move credit card operations to states where they would have to drop to reasonable interest rates. They are stuck with them, Delaware, or the Mormons in Utah. She should have called their bluff.
Ask Nikki Haley. She knows what stupid is.
Also, demand the NBA to merge with the WNBA,like how they absorbed what was left of the old ABA (Nets, Pacers, Nuggets and Spurs).
Okay, so she didn’t like the language. Fine. Get a clean bill proposed, approved, and signed. What is so difficult about simply saying that students need to compete in their birth sex? And if anyone is mentally confused, created a category for “It” or, more politically correct, “Other”.
This misinformation surrounding this is STUPID. She sent the bill back for technical reasons, but she issued an EO protecting women’s sports.
That hasn’t prevented the jackals from spouting off ignorant offal.
“This bill would only allow the NCAA to bully South Dakota, and it would actually prevent women from being able to participate in collegiate sports.” So among the “style and form” changes she requested is that the bill would only prevent biological males from competing against girls in elementary and high school athletics, not at the college level.
I’ve returned to being a fan.
“what a load of biased and self-righteous crap”
Tell me about it. She was in the top-tier, and then her selfishness took her out!
One thing that doesn’t get much attention about Trump was the very simple fact that he had FU money. Most politicians - like Noem - are HUGELY dependent on funding from outside sources, like big business. Trump is a generational politician largely because he enjoys the luxury of being able to say - and only say - exactly what’s on his mind. Noem, like so many others, doesn’t enjoy that same privilege.
She has ‘investors’ and a critical mass of those investors wanted this bill smothered in its crib. It’s that simple.
Another Jeb!
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