Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt signed a invoice into regulation on Wednesday that stops transgender women and girls from competing on feminine sports activities groups, becoming a member of a dozen different states with comparable legal guidelines.

Flanked by greater than a dozen younger feminine athletes, together with his 14-year-old daughter Piper, Stitt signed the measure, dubbed the “Save Ladies’s Sports activities Act.”

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“This invoice, the Save Ladies’s Sports activities Act, to us in Oklahoma is simply frequent sense,” mentioned Stitt, a first-term Republican who’s operating for re-election. “In relation to sports activities and athletics, women ought to compete in opposition to women. Boys ought to compete in opposition to boys. And let’s be very clear: That is all this invoice says.”

The invoice, which simply handed the Republican-led Home and Senate principally alongside occasion traces, took impact instantly with the governor’s signature. It applies to feminine sports activities groups in each highschool and faculty.

The brand new regulation was shortly panned by civil rights teams as unnecessarily concentrating on a bunch of people that already are marginalized.

“Transgender folks belong all over the place, however with the swipe of a pen and a public show, Gov. Stitt has despatched a transparent message to Oklahoma’s susceptible transgender youth that they don’t seem to be welcome or accepted in our state,” Tamya Cox-Toure, the manager director of the Oklahoma chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. “Finally, SB2 violates the US Structure and federal civil rights regulation, places Oklahoma prone to shedding federal funding, and harms transgender youth, all to resolve an issue that doesn’t exist.”

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The state’s governing physique for highschool sports activities, the Oklahoma Secondary Colleges Exercise Affiliation, has had a coverage in place since 2015 addressing transgender athletes’ participation in sports activities, however OSSAA spokesman Van Shea Iven mentioned no college has ever requested enforcement of the coverage for a male scholar transitioning to feminine.

Exterior the room the place Stitt signed the invoice, 26-year-old Cara Kleber, who’s transgender, held an indication that learn: “How does it really feel bullying children needing assist?”

“They don’t seem to be going to maintain trans children from enjoying sports activities, having enjoyable or dwelling their lives,” Kleber mentioned. “What they will do with this invoice is inform them they don’t seem to be invited in areas and amongst everybody else, that they don’t seem to be equal, that they don’t seem to be cherished, that they don’t seem to be cared for.”

The same invoice didn’t advance final 12 months, however a number of supporters of the measure mentioned they have been satisfied to vote for it after College of Pennsylvania swimmer Lia Thomas, a trans girl, received a title earlier this month on the nationwide NCAA Ladies’s Division I championship.

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Some opponents had raised issues concerning the NCAA pulling sports activities tournaments from Oklahoma, together with the Ladies’s Faculty World Collection held annually in Oklahoma Metropolis, however Stitt mentioned he wasn’t involved.

“We’re not apprehensive about it, as a result of we all know Oklahomans are with us and the vast majority of People are with us as properly,” he mentioned.