Texas Governor Greg Abbott on Monday signed
into law a bill banning transgender girls from participating in female sports
at public schools, joining a wave of similar measures emerging from
Republican-controlled statehouses across the country, Premium Times reports.
According to the report, supporters of the
bill, due to take effect on Jan. 18, say it is aimed at protecting fairness in
school sports by eliminating what they see as an inherent physical competitive
advantage of transgender athletes playing on female teams.
Equal rights advocates decry such
restrictions as discriminatory, “hate”-based measures whose real purpose is to
energize hard-core social conservatives, with little or no evidence that trans
women or girls are dominating sports, the report stated further.
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Greg Abbott, Texas Governor |
SEB gathers that seven other states have
passed similar laws this year, part of a Republican-led national campaign since
Idaho in March 2020 barred athletes who were assigned a male gender at birth
from competing on sports teams against those assigned as female in public
schools or colleges.