PHOENIX (AZFamily) — President Donald Trump laid out his legislative priorities back in December, one of which was banning transgender athletes from competing in women’s sports.
The president could sign such an executive order as early as Wednesday.
“I applaud President Trump. Allowing biological males to identify mentally as female to compete against biological females is not fair, and it gives a tremendous competitive advantage to these transgender females who are biologically male,” said State Senator Kavanagh.
Kavanagh sponsored a similar law back in Arizona in 2022.
“Allowing biological males who identify as female to compete with biological females is very dangerous for the females in in sports, where there’s a lot of contact. You can seriously injure a female athlete,” he said.
This law ended up being block by a federal applies court. Those who fought against the law feel this executive order will face the same fate.
“Everyone knows what it feels like to be excluded when you’re a child. No child should be excluded from a school activity because of who they are. Sports provide physical, emotional, and social benefits to children that last throughout their lives,” said Attorney Rachel Berg.
Berg is with the National Center for Lesbian Rights, this is the group that represented two transgender Arizona student-athletes who sued the state back in 2023 for not letting them play.
She feels if this executive order is signed the courts will side with the transgender athletes as they did in their lawsuit.
“We know that bans similar to this have been struck down uniformly across, in courts across the country because courts have found that being transgender is not a proxy for athletic advantage or athletic performance,” Berg said.
Regardless of what happens, the AIA, which oversees high school sports, said no matter what they have to follow state and federal guidelines which means they would have to follow any executive order.
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