The Wisconsin Senate passed a bill banning biological males from women’s sports Tuesday and sent the legislation to the governor’s desk, according to The Associated Press.
The bill was introduced in August 2023 and requires high school athletes in public and private schools to compete according to their biological sex. Wisconsin senators passed the legislation in a 20 to 11 vote, with one Republican joining Democrats against on the last day of the session, according to the AP.
The bill was passed in October 2023 by the state Assembly alongside two other bills that banned men in women’s collegiate sports and would bar a physician from performing a sex change surgery or administering puberty blockers to a minor or risk losing their license. Democratic Gov. Tony Evers, however, said that he would veto the legislation prior to the vote on Tuesday, according to a post on X, formerly known as Twitter.
“I’ll keep my promise to veto any bill making Wisconsin less safe, less inclusive, and less welcoming for LGBTQ people and kids—including this one,” Evers wrote. “And I’ll be damn proud to do it.”
The bill also allows female students who are “deprived of the opportunity to participate in an athletic sport or on an athletic team or who suffers any direct or indirect harm” due to being forced to compete against male athletes the right to “bring a cause of action against an educational institution for injunctive relief, damages, and any other relief available under law,” according to the text.
For the bill to survive Evers’ veto, lawmakers would need to have a two-thirds majority vote in both houses in favor of overriding the governor’s decision, but currently Republicans are just shy of the needed votes.
Half the country now has a law on the books barring athletes who identify as transgender from competing in categories outside their biological sex, according to the Movement Advancement Project. Nassau County filed a lawsuit on March 6 against Democratic Attorney General Letitia James of New York for demanding the county lift its ban on biological males in women’s sports.
Evers did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
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