Posted on 04/25/2021 10:16:49 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
North Dakota’s Republican Gov. Doug Burgum followed South Dakota Gov. Krist Noem’s lead by vetoing a bill on Wednesday that would have banned biologically male transgender athletes from playing in women and girls’ sports.
Burgum described his decision to block the passage of House Bill 1298 in a letter to House Speaker Kim Koppelman and explained the measure is not currently necessary.
The bill would have prevented any entity that receives public funding from the state from allowing "an individual who was assigned the opposite sex at birth to participate on an athletic team sponsored or funded by the state, political subdivision, or entity and which is exclusively for females or exclusively for males."
The governor wrote that there is no evidence that the fairness of girls’ sports in North Dakota is in “immediate danger,” as the bill suggests. He stated that there had not been a recorded incident of a transgender individual attempting to play on a girls’ sports team in the state.
The governor said the state has fairness in sports because of the “caring and thoughtful leadership” of the North Dakota High School Activities Association.
“The bill would unnecessarily inject the state into a local issue by creating a ban with myriad unforeseen consequences,” the governor wrote.
He added that the NDHSAA has regulations in place that require "transgender girls to undergo testosterone suppression treatment for gender transition for a full calendar year before they are eligible to compete in girls' sports."
The bill passed by a 69-25 vote in the House of Representatives and a narrow 21-20 vote in the Senate. The House voted on Thursday to override the veto. But the governor’s veto was sustained as the Senate failed to achieve a two-thirds majority to override the veto.
"We need to keep women on an even playing field," Republican Rep. Kathy Skroch said during a House debate on the bill, noting the difference in men and women’s height, weight, heart size and lung capacity, Fox News reported.
"There is a reason why there is separation of boys and girls sports.”
The American Civil Liberties Union of North Dakota praised Burgum’s veto of the legislation in a statement released Wednesday.
“House Bill 1298 was never about leveling the playing field for student athletes,” Libby Skarin, ACLU of North Dakota campaigns director, said. “It was obvious from the beginning that this discriminatory legislation was about creating solutions to problems that don’t exist and, in the process, harming some of the most vulnerable people in our state.”
Burgum is likely to face backlash from conservative organizations, as did other Republican governors who vetoed similar transgender-related measures.
Noem of South Dakota also refused to sign similar legislation in March that would have banned biological males who identify as female from competing in women’s sports in South Dakota, which was met with a wave of conservative backlash.
Though she had formerly tweeted support of the bill and her excitement to sign it into law, Noem issued a “style and form” veto and urged the legislature to make changes to the bill to avoid legal challenges brought by the NCAA.
Instead of passing the legislation, Noem signed two executive orders to protect fairness in both K-12 and college athletics designed to protect girls’ sports from individuals of the opposite biological sex.
Noem also announced the creation of a multi-state coalition to protect women’s sports, “where the NCAA cannot possibly punish us all,” she said.
She later released a statement affirming her commitment to protecting women’s sports from transgender athletes.
The vetoes come as nearly 30 states are considering similar legislation.
Arkansas, Idaho, Mississippi and Tennessee have already passed similar bills. Alabama recently passed similar legislation that is awaiting the governor's signature.
Republican Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson recently vetoed legislation that would have banned puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and genital mutilation of children under 18-years-old, saying it was “overbroad” and would cause government overreach.
The Arkansas legislature voted to override Hutchinson’s veto of the “Save Adolescents form Experimentation Act,” making it the first state to ban the prescribing of puberty blockers, hormonal drugs and surgical body mutilation of minors suffering from gender dysphoria.
Former President Donald Trump criticized Hutchinson for the decision and endorsed candidate and former White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders to be the state’s next governor.
Idiot.
There’s a lot of “assistant democrats” out there in GOP/GOPe clothing. Primary em all out.
This issue is even beyond sports for me. If Republicans can’t even fight for the objective truth of what is a man vs what is a woman, it’s all up for grabs. All will be decided by emotional mobs instead of logic.
I’d like to see more details on this stuff. If there is no evidence of any problem existing in a state, and passing a law will generate huge state expenditures in lawyer costs defending the law, then why have the law?
There is a concept of conservatism meaning as few laws about anything as possible.
The approach of using Executive Orders to accomplish the intent would seem to have merit in that the legal defense expenditures are dodged.
"Polls show the transgender ideology is deeply unpopular, especially among women and parents. In 2017, former President Barack Obama told NPR that his promotion of the transgender ideology made it easier for Donald Trump to win the presidency ."
Excuses for governors not signing similar bills: it goes too far, it doesn’t go far enough, it’s not really a problem. As usual, democrats keep pushing the boundaries, republicans keep finding excuses not to fight back.
“...The governor wrote that there is no evidence that the fairness of girls’ sports in North Dakota is in “immediate danger,”
That’s not the point you oily stool! Why does a law have to be passed on the self-evident anyhow? Back in the day a boy who “identified as a girl” and tried to compete as such would be ridiculed off the field. If he didn’t take the hint then his parents would have some serious medical and dental bills on their hands.
This law isn’t necessary, the governor says????
Or is he afraid of what the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, Huffington Post, et. al. will say about him if he signed the bill????
His reasoning reminds me a bit of the early days of the debate over homosexual marriage. At that time, many said that a constitutional amendment on marriage “wasn’t necessary”, because no court had yet imposed homosexual marriage.
By the time the Supreme Courts of many states, and the U.S. Supreme Court had imposed homosexual marriage, there was no longer any political will to deal with that issue.
So by saying “this isn’t necessary”, all this does is mean that we will have transsexual athletics by default at some future point.
Vetos ban on trans . . .
Is that a triple negative, or what?
People say these laws are a ban on transgender people in sports. That’s not true.
These laws, if passed, simply state that one must compete according to one’s biological sex.
But the liberals spin it as if these are prohibitions on transsexual people in sports.
I’d look at it differently. How many males are competing in female sports in North Dakota? If the answer is ZERO (and I suspect it is), then this law is nothing more than meaningless political pandering. The ND legislature might as well pass a law that prohibits thoroughbred horses from running in high school track meets.
He obviously doesn’t have a daughter or granddaughter.
It is happening in other states, not in ND, yet. Go ahead and take away the temptation with this measure. I think the reason for the Veto is the Gov is scared of the ACLU and NCAA, not because it is meaningless pandering, as if any politician has a problem with that. There is nothing wrong with reaffirming an objective truth of 2 genders, people could use some clarity.
Agreed. This isn’t merely a question concerning sports, moral values, and the usual . It’s a basic question of whether or not we still recognize reality. We are in hysterical times and one must stand up and say, “No!”
As I’m sure you are aware, that was a combination of greedy politicians saying whatever their advisors told them and clever ones outright lying about future intent.
I differ with most on FR when it comes to the actual issue of same-sex marriage, but no one can deny the way it was brought about to be accepted nationwide was dishonest.
And yes, the same playbook is being used with this issue. Except it’s going even faster because we have a huge portion of this country that is unwilling to say that the Emperor has no clothes.
Not surprised nor shocked.
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