The Republican governor of South Dakota on Friday refused to sign a bill from her own party’s lawmakers that would ban transsexual girls from participating in women’s sports in high school.
At the a statement launched on Twitter, Noem said he was sending the bill back to lawmakers for changes and indicated that he felt the ban should not be extended to college athletes.
“Unfortunately, in studying this legislation and conferring with legal experts in the past few days, I was concerned that the vague and overly broad language of this bill could have significant unexpected consequences,” wrote Noem.
“I am also concerned that the House Bill 1217 approach is unrealistic in the context of university athletics,” she added, writing that banning transgender athletes from university sports would cause conflict with national university athletic associations.
Republicans in the state legislature who supported the bill considered Noem’s efforts to force them to make changes to the legislation “inadequate”.
“Legislators are the ones who make the laws and the governor signs them,” State Representative Rhonda Milstead (R), who sponsored the project, told the Sioux Falls Argus Leader. “She is destroying the bill and writing a new law and that is not her job.”
As currently drafted, the bill would require students to submit a form verifying their age, biological sex and the lack of steroid use to be eligible for high school athletic programs.
An analysis of the Human Rights Campaign earlier this month found that lawmakers in more than half of the union’s states are currently considering bills that would restrict access to sports or health for transgender people in some way.