North Dakota GOP Gov. Doug Burgum Vetoes Trans Athlete Bill

A bill to protect girls’ rights to fair and equal sports from boys who insist they are female has been vetoed by North Dakota GOP Gov. Doug Burgum.

“The bill had passed the House 69-25 and the Senate 27-20 after conference committee amendments,” according to an April 21 report in the Bismarck Tribune. The report continued:

House Bill 1298, brought by Rep. Ben Koppelman, R-West Fargo, sought to prohibit public elementary and secondary schools from “knowingly” allowing a student to participate on a school-sponsored athletic team exclusively for their opposite sex.

Burgum’s veto follows a similar veto by South Dakota’s GOP Gov. Kristi Noem.

Activist groups of mainstream parents, feminists, and sports activists have won similar battles in Arkansas and Mississippi.

The issue is being fought in many additional states this year, and often amid threats by woke sports executives to punish voters’ states for protecting their children from the health-endangering transgender ideology.

Most polls show that voters strongly support protections for athletes and children.

In general, Democrats are touting the ideology, which promises to liberate people from the biology of their own bodies, usually with the help of risky drugs. Less than one percent of people claim to want to change their sex.

Most GOP legislators favor protections for athletes and for children. But an influential minority of GOP legislators line up with the business groups that want to go along with the Democrats’ support for the diversity-boosting ideology.

Burgum’s veto was applauded by the ACLU, said the Tribune: “ACLU of North Dakota Campaigns Director Libby Skarin in a statement said she was ‘thrilled’ with the veto.”

Burgum did not tout his veto message on his website or his Twitter account.

Burgum’s veto message dodged the issue of protecting the fairness of girls’ sports from males who insist they are women because they have a female “gender identity.”

He also dodged the underlying legal and cultural battle over whether a person’s legal sex should be defined by their biology or by their feelings of “gender identity.”

Instead, Burgum passed the issue to the state’s sports associations.

“North Dakota has fairness in girls’ and boys’ sports in large part because of the caring and thoughtful leadership of the North Dakota High School Activities Association (NDHSAA) Board and its members,” Burgum said in his veto statement.

“We have every confidence they will continue to ensure a level playing field for the more than 27,000 students who participate in North Dakota high school sports.”

The NDHSAA bars boys from playing in girls’ High School sports “until completing one calendar year of documented testosterone-suppression treatment.”