South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster signed a bill into law on Monday which prohibits transgender athletes from playing on women’s and girls’ teams in public schools and universities.
The bill, H.4607, was passed by the state Senate earlier this month and requires that students play on teams that correspond with their sex as indicated on their birth certificates.
“I think the girls ought to play girls and the boys ought to play boys. That’s the way we’ve always done it,” McMaster, a Republican, said at the time as NPR reported.
When asked if he meant biological boys, McMaster replied, “Are there any other kind?”
The move was celebrated by conservatives and supporters of protecting women’s and girls’ sports, including the Alliance Defending Freedom.
“We welcome South Carolina to the growing number of states that have acted to preserve fair competition for all females, whether in grade school or college. When the law ignores biological differences, it’s women and girls who bear the brunt of the harm,” ADF attorney Christiana Kiefer said in a statement.
“Male athletes do not belong in our daughters’ sports, period,” Terry Schilling of the American Principles Project also said. “This is a view shared by an overwhelming majority of Americans, as our recent polling of battleground states has shown. Biology matters, and no amount of gaslighting by woke ideologues will change that.”
However, LGBT activists were far less pleased.
“Transgender youth are not a threat to fairness in sports, and this law now needlessly stigmatizes young people who are simply trying to navigate their adolescence, make friends, and build skills like teamwork and leadership, winning and losing,” Ivy Hill, a leader of a coalition of over 30 groups dedicated to LGBT issues, said in a statement.
South Carolina is just the latest state of over a dozen others to pass such a bill, including Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, Idaho, and Texas.
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