Parents Demanded School Check the Gender of Girl Who Beat Their Kids in Sports

The nationwide anti-trans panic overtaking schools is harming transgender kids–but not only transgender kids.

Parents at one school in Utah filed a complaint and asked the school to investigate whether a girl who had beaten their daughters “by a wide margin” in competition was transgender, a representative from the state’s high school athletics association told state legislators Wednesday, according to the Deseret News and Salt Lake Tribune.

Utah banned transgender girls from participating in girls sports in March, over the veto of the state’s Republican governor. This complaint apparently happened last year, before the law’s passage, when Utah high school sports required transgender athletes to be on at least a year of hormone blockers prior to participating. 

As part of its investigation, the Utah high school athletics association ordered the school to call the girl’s middle school and elementary school for enrollment records to confirm she was cisgender, the representative, David Spatafore, told legislators. “The school went back to kindergarten and she’d always been a female,” Spatafore said. 

Neither the identity of the school nor the sport she participated in were disclosed, in order to protect the girl’s identity, the Deseret News reported. In fact, the girl and her parents were never even informed about the investigation, Spatafore said, according to the Tribune. 

Other complaints the high school association has received since the law’s passage include “that female athlete doesn’t look feminine enough,” Spatafore said, telling lawmakers the association looks into each complaint. None of the accusations that student athletes are secretly transgender have been verified, Spatafore said, according to the Tribune.  .

The ACLU of Utah sued the state earlier this year on behalf of two transgender student athletes; similar legislation in other states, including Indiana and West Virginia, has been blocked by the federal courts. 

“Quite frankly, this is new ground for us,” Spatafore told legislators of how the law is being enforced. “I’m not going to say that we have it down pat, because I have no clue. I don’t think any of us in the office have a clue if we have it down pat. What we want to do is we just want to try to do our job.”

When GOP Gov. Spencer Cox vetoed the bill, he noted that the state had just four transgender high school athletes at the time, and only one was a girl. This year 42 states have passed either anti-trans or anti-abortion laws, and more than half of states have considered anti-trans legislation. 

“Rarely has so much fear and anger been directed at so few,” Cox wrote in a letter accompanying his veto, before Utah’s Republican-dominated Legislature overrode it. 

“I don’t understand what they are going through or why they feel the way they do. But I want them to live. And all the research shows that even a little acceptance and connection can reduce suicidality significantly.”

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