Posted on 03/30/2021 9:30:20 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
After failed negotiations between South Dakota Republican Gov. Kristi Noem and the state's House lawmakers, the governor issued two executive orders Monday designed to limit participation on women's and girls' school sports teams to people assigned female at birth.
Earlier this month, state lawmakers passed a bill restricting transgender athletes from playing on sports teams that align with their gender identity. After signaling support — even excitement — for the bill, Noem declined to sign it over concerns the law would not survive legal challenges. Instead, she asked lawmakers to revise the legislation's language. Major conservative backlash ensued and on Monday, South Dakota lawmakers failed to come to an agreement.
"Only girls should play girls' sports," Noem tweeted Monday evening. "Given the legislature's failure to accept my proposed revisions to HB 1217, I am immediately signing two executive orders to address this issue: one to protect fairness in K-12 athletics, and another to do so in college athletics."
Neither of the governor's orders mention transgender athletes specifically but Mark Miller, the governor's general counsel, says because legislators did not approve Noem's changes to the bill, she issued the orders as a temporary fix.
The Department of Education and the Board of Regents will need to ensure that K-12 school districts and colleges and universities restrict participation in girls' and women's sports to athletes who can prove their assigned sex at birth.
"I think the executive orders speak for themselves," Miller says. "What they do is set out that DOE and BOR should take steps to ensure that girls play girls' sports."
Miller says the orders are designed to clarify where South Dakota stands on the issue. Lawmakers in several other states have already passed bills this year attempting to change the rights of transgender individuals.
(Excerpt) Read more at npr.org ...
Kristi Noem continues to shoot herself in the foot on this
...people assigned female at birth.
Trump had the same kind of conservative meltdown at first, until we learned to watch and pay attention. This is actually a good step for the Governor.
GOD made plans for each of us even BEFORE we were born. Changing genders is not one of them.
The title....
‘Girls’ ???
How so? She didn’t sign a legally flawed bill into law, she then signs EO’s to do what a good piece of legislation would have done and is going to call the legislature back into session to fix their flawed bill. All that sounds like a good Governor doing a good job. What good would signing the bill have done if it was just going to be ruled unconstitutional by the courts? Start using your brain to think instead of using it to emote.
The language used is awkward sometimes.
Assigned female at birth? They make it sound as if such an “assignment” is an arbitrary designation, and that we as a society are denying the gender identity possibilities as that baby grows up.
RE: Kristi Noem continues to shoot herself in the foot on this
Why? If the purpose is to ban transgenders from Women’s Sports will this not do the job?
No. It bans males from competing with females
Sex is, of course, determined at conception.
Both posts, your and mine, are needlessly petty.
“Assigned female at birth” - that’s NPR all right, desperately framing the matter so they can’t lose. Doctors don’t have quotas, they do have eyes.
I nam thinking someone weas trying to sneak somthing in or sabotage the bill upon state court challenge.
I agree. Seems like the E.O.s are a patch for a flawed bill, and she has announced plans to fix the problem legislatively.
This is the right move.
What is there about this that (some) people just cannot accept? God assigned gender to each of us before we were born & God makes no mistakes. Those hypocrites who think HE does will have a huge awakening coming at some point & hopefully it will come while they are still living.
The only thing that appears to be happening is the Governor is not falling in to the trap of "DO SOMETHING! ANYTHING!"
It appears that Governor has looked at the legal side of the issue and won't step in to the trap of setting the state up for a legal battle in the courts that the state would lose.
I think she means “what it says on the birth certificate”.
This may not work for people born in the last few years, but this will do for now. By the time they are old enough to participate, either sanity will have returned, WWII will have made the point moot, or a good bill will be produced.
You are probably correct. A innocuous poison pill that kills the whole bill and results in the opposite intention of the bill forever.
Trump had the same kind of conservative meltdown at first, until we learned to watch and pay attention. This is actually a good step for the Governor.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.