Students must provide proof of their gender at the time of birth, if their birth certificate is not the original or does not indicate the student’s gender at the time of birth. This does not apply to students in kindergarten until 4th grade, says the Tennessee bill.
The Tennessee bill, which opponents called “discriminatory”, will require students to play sports based on the gender identification of their birth certificate and only compete with other athletes of the same biological sex.
“Governor Lee’s haste to sign this discriminatory anti-transgender bill, unfortunately, comes as no surprise, considering how Tennessee’s elected leaders have aggressively pushed a ‘Hate List’ against LGBTQ people in recent years,” said Alphonso David, president of the Human Rights Campaign, in a statement.
“This project legislates against a problem that simply does not exist and targets transgender children who are trying to navigate in their teens,” said David. “Trans children are children. Excluding and discriminating against them is very harmful to them and weakens the communities in which these children feel excluded and marginalized.”