Idaho Governor Brad Little signed the bill into law in late March.
By Gigi Picard ’22
On March 30, the day before International Transgender Day of Visibilty, Governor of Idaho Brad Little signed a bill into law that bans transgender women from competing in girl’s and women’s sports. The Idaho Senate passed the bill, also known as the Fairness in Women’s Sports Act, by a vote of 24-11. Idaho is the first state to have passed a law banning transgender athletes from women’s sports. This law applies to college as well as high school athletics.
“Idaho’s choice to pass this bill, especially right now during a global crisis, is morally repugnant,” Declan Quinlan ’22, a student who identifies as nonbinary, said.
The bill was originally sponsored by Idaho Republican Representative Barbara Ehardt, who played basketball in college and was an NCAA Division I women’s basketball head coach. Ehardt has referred to transgender women as “biological males.”
“Just as we separate teams based on age to ensure competitive fairness, so too must we preserve women’s sports for females so that our daughters and granddaughters are guaranteed a level playing field,” she said in a guest opinion column in the Idaho Press.
“Contrary to the assertions of some former Idaho attorneys general, my bill is fully consistent with both the Constitution and federal law,” Ehardt wrote. “When harmful policies deprive our daughters and granddaughters of the chance to compete and win in sports, then our legislature has a duty to act.”
The argument for the bill was to give girls and women a fair opportunity to compete in sports, as men tend to “outperform” women due to their testosterone levels. Now, athletes may have to undergo sex and gender testing to prove they are female, which was also issued as controversial.
“The adjudication process could lead to sex testing that would allow for genital exams, genetic testing and hormone testing,” The New York Times reported.
“They can have a DNA test to determine chromosomes, and those tests are as cheap as $50,’ Representative Ehardt said to The New York Times. “And again, if there are questions beyond that, there are hormone, urine and blood tests that are much more common.’”
Critics of the bill called it transphobic. Moreover, transgender people would not be the only people affected by this law. Athletes identifying as intersex could also be excluded from sports.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Idaho criticized the law. They explained that there are privacy issues involved as there are concerns about schools “outing” students by having to identify transgender students and separating them. According to the ACLU, “Schools are not legally and ethically allowed to do this. People who identify as transgender may not be ready to come out, and may have concerns about it. This law really is a lawsuit waiting to happen.”
“In a time when there are so many issues to be addressed, [Idaho’s lawmakers] choose to target a marginalized group and solve a problem that they have completely made up, making life more dangerous for transgender people, bit by bit,” Quinlan said. “If Idaho’s state government would focus on the actual issues at hand, maybe they wouldn’t be [the] fourth highest state in coronavirus cases per capita.”