Oklahoma is requiring student athletes to sign ‘biological sex affidavits’ | Xtra Magazine

Within the wake of the passage of a legislation barring trans youth from taking part on sports activities groups in alignment with their gender, Oklahoma colleges are actually requiring “organic intercourse affidavits” from scholar athletes. 

On August 3, information of the affidavit coverage’s implementation at one faculty district unfold on Twitter after Erin Matson, govt director with abortion rights group Reproaction, shared a photograph of an affidavit from Woodall Public College in Talequah, Oklahoma. 

“This has nothing to do with encouraging ladies to be athletes,” Matson mentioned in a tweet accompanying the photograph. “That is totalitarianism. It’s the white nationalist agenda. The anti-LGBTQ2s+ agenda. The anti-abortion agenda. It’s all the identical agenda.”

Below the Save Ladies’s Sports activities Act, signed into legislation in March, Oklahoma colleges are required to implement the affidavits starting with the upcoming faculty yr. The affidavit requires the lawful father or mother or guardian of a scholar (or the coed themself, if they’re over 18) to certify the coed’s legally listed intercourse, together with a notary’s signature. A brand new affidavit have to be signed in the beginning of every faculty yr. A number of different faculty districts apart from Woodall have begun to implement the kinds, with native station KOAM first noting their presence in early July.  

Native advocates have spoken out in opposition to the coverage, criticizing conservative legislators for singling out trans youth. “We’re livid that any scholar has to come across the invasive gender oath paperwork now required by our legislators and our governor so as to perhaps entry sports activities at public colleges in Oklahoma,” mentioned Nicole McAfee, govt director of Freedom Oklahoma, in a press release to Xtra. 

McAfee famous that in legislative periods, lawmakers instructed it was “absurd” to query the affidavit provision. “They mentioned the paperwork wouldn’t be any completely different from what colleges already require. It wasn’t true in principle and it isn’t true in follow.”

The sports activities ban, signed into legislation by Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt in March, prohibits trans scholar athletes at public colleges and faculties from competing on the sports activities crew that matches their gender. At the moment 17 different states have handed comparable laws—together with Florida, Arizona, Idaho and Indiana, in keeping with the Motion Development Challenge. Up to now, Oklahoma is the one certainly one of these states to require a signed affidavit. 

Oklahoma legislators haven’t simply focused trans youth in sports activities this session—in April, Gov. Stitt signed a legislation that now prohibits “X” gender markers on start certificates, the primary of its sort to be carried out within the U.S. And in Might, Stitt signed one other legislation that stops trans college students from utilizing the toilet in alignment with their lived gender.