Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds Signs Bill Banning Biological Males from Women’s K-12, College Sports

Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds signed legislation Thursday that will immediately restrict participation in women’s college and K-12 sports to biological females.

During the signing ceremony, Reynolds asserted that transgender women have a competitive advantage over female athletes, making the playing field fundamentally unfair, regardless of the medical steps taken to mute their biological advantages.

“It worries me that this bill is needed at all. It’s hard to imagine how anyone who cares about the rights of women and girls could support anything less,” Reynolds said. “No amount of talent, training or effort on their part can make up for the natural, physical advantages males have over females.”

Effective immediately, the law applies to public and private K-12 schools and community colleges as well as colleges and universities affiliated with the NCAA and NAIA.

For many concerned female competitors, including record and title holders on college scholarships, transgender inclusion in women’s sports has encroached on female spaces that former generations of feminists fought to preserve. Ainsley Erzen, a high school track star from Iowa, spoke at the signing ceremony Thursday to support the bill, which directly affects her as an athlete.

Erzen and many others who have been critical of the transgender sports push have contended that womanhood is a unique experience that cannot be artificially copied and that female-exclusive arenas were designed for them, to excel in an environment without discrimination or obstacles.

“The message that women are so much more than a hormone level, that the things girls love are worth protecting and their hard work and dedication is recognized and their dreams can become a reality,” Erzen said. She has a track scholarship at the University of Arkansas.

As Reynolds signed the law, however, it was being silently protested. In solidarity with transgender students, Becky Smith, the executive director of Iowa Safe Schools, an LGBTQ youth advocacy organization, hung up a transgender flag in the back as the ceremony was conducted.

Some Democrats in the Iowa legislature, which is Republican-led, suggested that the law was inconsistent in its treatment of transgender students, assimilating them into the classroom according to their preferred gender identity during school hours but separating them according to biological sex for extracurriculars.

Multiple Republican states, such as Florida, Texas, and Tennessee, have enacted similar legislation over the last couple years, enshrining the female exclusivity of women’s athletics into law.

More from National Review

• Record-Setting Transgender Swimmer Bested in Meet by Another Transgender Swimmer

• Transgender Sex Offenders Placed in Women’s Jails in Scotland

• DeSantis Signs Bill Banning Males from Female High School, College Sports