Public Schools That Allow Transgender Athletes To Participate In Girls' Sports Will Be Strictly Penalized

Illustration of transgender athlete Alana McLaughlin (Instagram @lady_feral)

JAKARTA - Tennessee will add tougher penalties to public schools for allowing transgender athletes to participate in girls' sports, under a bill signed into law by Republican Governor Bill Lee.

Lee quietly signed off on the proposal last Friday without comment. The governor had previously signed a law last year mandating that student athletes must prove their gender match listed on the student's "real" birth certificate.

If a birth certificate is not available, then the parents must provide other evidence that "indicates the sex of the student at the time of birth".

This year, the Legislature decided to add penalties to the ban - which apply even as a lawsuit challenging its constitutionality makes it through the courts. The trial has been provisionally set for March 2023.

According to the bill, the Tennessee Department of Education will withhold part of state funding from local school districts that fail to gender determine students to participate in middle or high school sports. The measure does not specify exactly how much money the state should hold.

"Telling transgender students that they can't participate as who they really are is tantamount to excluding them from sports completely - depriving their peers of the opportunities available to their peers and sending the message that they don't deserve to live full lives," said Henry Seaton, ACLU of Tennessee's transgender justice attorney, in a statement quoted by Marca, Wednesday.

For information, the ACLU or American Civil Liberties Union is a non-profit organization formed in New York in 1920 to fight for constitutional freedoms in the United States.

Tennessee lawmakers also put forward a separate bill that would prohibit transgender athletes from participating in women's college sports. Republicans have also pushed for letting teachers and school districts use pronouns that transgender students don't like, freeing teachers from work sentences and protecting schools from civil liability. Both proposals are expected to be approved by the General Assembly.

Last year, no other state enacted more laws targeting transgender people than Tennessee. That includes banning transgender athletes from playing high school or public high school sports.