North Dakota’s Republican Gov. Doug Burgum on Tuesday night signed two transgender athlete bans into legislation, successfully prohibiting transgender women and girls from becoming a member of feminine sports groups in Okay-12 and faculty.

Lawmakers within the House and Senate handed the payments with veto-proof majorities this 12 months. If the governor had vetoed the payments or refused to signal them, the payments seemingly would’ve nonetheless turn into legislation.

Burgum mentioned in an announcement that over the previous two years, with greater than 27,000 college students taking part in North Dakota highschool sports, “there still has not been a single recorded incident of a transgender girl playing or entering the process to even ask to play on a North Dakota girls’ team.”

Nevertheless, the Legislature has now “resoundingly determined” that restrictions past the present guidelines for ladies’ sports needs to be codified in state legislation, he mentioned.

At least 19 different states have imposed restrictions on transgender athletes.

Burgum added: “Concerns raised last session about such policies jeopardizing the ability to host regional and national collegiate tournaments have not materialized in the roughly 20 states that have passed similar legislation.”

Republican lawmakers throughout the U.S. have drafted a whole bunch of legal guidelines this 12 months to push again on LGBTQ+ freedoms, particularly focusing on transgender individuals’s on a regular basis lives - together with sports, well being care, loos, workplaces and faculties.

The Biden administration this month proposed a rule, which nonetheless faces a prolonged approval course of, to forbid outright bans on transgender athletes.

In 2021, Burgum vetoed a virtually similar invoice that will have banned transgender women from taking part in on women’ groups in public faculties. Lawmakers didn’t have sufficient votes that 12 months to override the veto.

This 12 months, lawmakers wrote new laws to duplicate and develop that invoice - together with on the faculty degree. Those payments at the moment are legislation.

• Trisha Ahmed is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit nationwide service program that locations journalists in native newsrooms to report on undercovered points.

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