They’ve Protected Girls’ Sports In Florida, But Watch What Happens Here…

You’re going to see a good bit of talk about how Louisiana’s legislature stepped up and did something about protecting girls’ sports in the Bayou State, and that’s going to be held out as evidence that the legislative leadership is serious about taking care of the “social” issues that many conservatives believe have to be handled in the face of mounting cultural aggressions on the Left.

The Critical Race Theory issue, which we’ve talked about over and over again here at The Hayride, was a perfect example of how the Louisiana legislative leadership abjectly failed to advance the ball and in fact did damage to the agenda. But with the passage of SB 156 by Sen. Beth Mizell in both the House and Senate, and is on its way to the governor’s desk, one major piece of resistance against the cultural aggressions of the “woke” movement has seen some progress.

Or has it?

In Florida, they don’t have these problems. They’re making policy where it needs to be made in the Sunshine State. After putting up a wall against Critical Race Theory and passing significant election reform, the transgenders-in-girls’-sports issue has also been taken care of.

Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) is signing a bill aimed to protect women’s sports — a move that comes at a time the left pushes to allow biological males who say they are female to compete against – and with  – biological girls.

“In Florida, girls and going to play girls sports and boys are going to play boys sports,” DeSantis said Tuesday to applause.

In April, the Florida legislature passed a measure preventing transgender athletes from participating in women’s sports at both the high school and college levels. DeSantis is signing the measure into law Tuesday during an event at Trinity Christian Academy in Jacksonville, Florida.

As Breitbart News reported at the time, “the state House had earlier approved the bill, but it did not advance in the Florida Senate. Ultimately, the ban was made part of a popular charter school bill and was passed by a vote of 23-16 in the Senate, reported the News Service of Florida.”

While far-left Democrats have falsely dismissed such measures as discriminatory — Florida State Sen. Victor Torres (D) described it as a bill which will “destroy the lives of those children and their futures” — the bill itself simply makes an individual’s “biological sex” on a birth certificate the prime factor in determining if an individual is eligible to play on a female sports team.

Torres’ opposition is ridiculous, of course, as trans kids are in a whole lot more danger of destruction from the process of trying to change their sex than from having to play sports according to the gender they were born with – something the 40 percent post-op transsexual suicide attempt rate makes patently clear.

All it requires here is the will to impose common sense upon law and politics. That it seems like a revolutionary act to do so is part and parcel of how far gone we are thanks to cowardice on the part of Republican politicians.

Which brings us back to SB 156.

John Bel Edwards has said he would veto a bill protecting girls’ sports from a transgender invasion. He says he’s worried about people who are emotionally fragile, something which comes off as idiotic. What happens if a 220-pound boy who’s mixed up enough to think he’s a girl ends up on a soccer or field hockey team and beats the hell out of the girls on the field in case SB 156 doesn’t become law? In that case we’re prioritizing the emotionally fragile over the physically fragile, which is in no way, shape or form good policy.

Knowing this, and also knowing there are enough votes for SB 156 in both the Senate (29-6) and House (78-19), Edwards has to be crafty about how he handles the bill.

Here’s what is absolutely likely to happen.

Within 10 days after receiving a bill from the Louisiana legislature, the governor can choose to sign it or veto it. That meant, since June 10 is the day that, by statute, this session must end, anything which wasn’t on Edwards’ desk by Monday, which was a holiday, Edwards has the option of waiting the full 10 days and then vetoing. When he does that, he’s all but assured of having his veto stand up, because Louisiana’s legislature never calls a veto override session.

Which meant that when Mizell’s bill didn’t get sent to the governor’s desk until Tuesday, owing to the fact it only passed the House last Thursday before the Memorial Day break, Edwards then had the option of waiting.

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This isn’t just how the cookie crumbled, by the way. Mizell’s bill is highly likely to die because it was meant to.

We know this because the bill languished for two weeks on the House calendar after it passed out of the Education Committee on May 13. If Speaker Clay Schexnayder had called it any sooner, it would have been on Edwards’ desk in time that he would have had to veto it while the Legislature was still in session and that veto would have almost assuredly been overridden in a high-profile rebuke to the governor.

But stalling the bill like he did means that Edwards will either betray the national Democrat party by signing it (he’s already said he won’t), or vetoing it right away and giving legislators a chance for an override (a bit of theater he’ll surely extract a big price for in negotiations, something we would doubt he would do in any event), or else he’ll wait until next Thursday or Friday after this session is over and then veto it.

And SB 156 will not become law. Not unless there is a veto override session called. Which, for your information, there almost certainly will not be.

Just remember these mechanics when and if any of the legislative leadership attempts to bamboozle the public by claiming they struck a blow for cultural conservatism in this session. In Florida, they make policy. In Louisiana, they make theater.

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