Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the Fairness in Women’s Sports Act into law on Tuesday and said the state is committed to protecting girls and women from the left’s efforts to allow biological males who “identify” as women to compete against biological females.
“In Florida, girls are going to play girls sports, and boys are going to play boys sports,” DeSantis said at a signing ceremony at Trinity Christian Academy in Jacksonville.
Selina Soule become an activist for women’s rights on the playing field after losing opportunities as a high school track athlete in Connecticut when she was forced to compete against biological men. She praised DeSantis at the event:
In 2017, Connecticut began allowing two male athletes who self-identify as girls to compete in girls’ sports. During all four years of high school, I was forced to compete against them, even though they were bigger, stronger, and faster than me because they were male. In just three years, these two athletes won 15 Women’s Championship titles, and they set 17 new individual meet records, records which we girls had no hope of breaking. I remember what it was like to line up for the race and get into my blocks already knowing the outcome long before the race started. Those two biological males would dominate the field leaving us girls to compete for third place and beyond. No matter how hard we trained and how hard we pushed ourselves, they beat us time and time again. We elite female athletes don’t give up a normal high school experience just from participation trophies, we race to win.
This isn’t about self-expression. This is about our right, a woman’s right, to win. I have lost countless opportunities over the past few years. I lost opportunities to compete on World Class tracks and opportunities to win titles. During my junior year, I was denied the chance to compete at the regional New England championships. I missed advancing to the next level of competition in the 55-meter dash by just two spots, two spots that were taken by biological males. It was frustrating, heartbreaking, and demoralizing to be sidelined in my own sport. Female athletes deserve the same opportunity as boys to excel and chase our dreams. Allowing male athletes to compete and girl’s sports shatters those dreams and strips away opportunities that so many of us have spent years working to obtain. We must protect the integrity of women’s sports.
So I decided to take action. Three of my fellow female athletes tonight filed a lawsuit last year with the Alliance Defending Freedom against the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference because girls and women deserve the chance to compete on a fair playing field. After reviewing the Fairness and Women’s Sports Act, all I can say on behalf of all female athletes is thank you, Governor.
As someone who was one of the first to start speaking against this injustice, it is very encouraging that my story has reached people across the country and that many have seen what’s happened in Connecticut and want to take the stand to protect female athletes in their state effort to protect women’s sports so no other young girl has to go through the same pain and heartbreak I had to endure my four years of high school. I am grateful to Florida lawmakers and especially Governor DeSantis for preserving fairness and women’s sports and allowing countless young girls and women the opportunity to succeed in the sport that they love.
Florida is the eighth state to pass laws restricting sports participation to assigned birth gender, not gender identitiy.
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