South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem signed a bill into law Thursday that protects girls and college-aged women from having to play alongside biological males on female high school and college sports teams.
“It's not a tough topic, really. I mean, it's about fairness,” Noem said when asked about the measure she signed into law.
“We fought years ago for Title IX so that women had an opportunity to compete. Now there's many different competitions where biological sex isn't that big of a deal, and we don't make accommodations for it in debate competitions or academic speech competitions. But in athletics, it does matter via biology, and science has proven that to us.”
“This is a statute in the state of South Dakota that will ensure that girls sports are protected. Years ago, I fought for this back in 2017 and 2018 to protect the state of rodeo. We know the federal government has come in and dictated to different sporting events in the state before – that we couldn't have boys and girls events. I fought then and won and protected girl’s events in the sport of rodeo. We did it again and in South Dakota will always ensure that it's a level playing field.”