by Mitch Perry, Florida Phoenix
Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier is calling on U.S. Masters Swimming (USMS), a Florida nonprofit that provides structured swimming programs for adults, to prohibit transgender athletes from competing against women and entering into their locker rooms, threatening legal action if the organization doesn’t reverse course.
“This is not right,” Uthmeier said during a press conference in Orlando Tuesday. “It still seems insane to me that we’re having this conversation in this country, but we will always fight for what’s right in Florida.”
U.S. Masters Swimming was founded in 1970 and is a national membership nonprofit organization that offers events, swim clubs, and competitions. It released an updated policy regarding transgender participation last month. That change came shortly after Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton launched an investigation over potential violations of Texas law following reports that USMS had allowed a biological male athlete to compete in women’s events in San Antonio in April.
The new policy that went into effect on July 1 now allows USMS members to register for the competition category that aligns with their identity, but for competition purposes athletes will not be included unless they are swimming in the competition category that aligns with their sex assigned at birth. Swimmers who choose to swim in a category that does not align with their sex at birth will no longer be eligible for “Recognition Programs,” but their results will stay in the USMS database.
Uthmeier says that doesn’t cut it.
“They now say that they will reserve, it appears, some competitions for just women but not all, and they have some loopholes where if you go through a transition process you could become eligible again to compete in any one of these competitions,” he said. “This is not acceptable. It does not fly with Florida law. We will use every tool at our disposal from our civil rights laws to our anti-discrimination laws to our consumer protection laws to ensure that we are protecting women and girls.”
Florida laws
Florida’s new Education Commissioner, Anastasios Kamoutsas, said that Florida has become a “beacon of sanity” for women’s sports and women’s spaces, citing legislation in recent years signed into law by Gov. Ron DeSantis on this issue.
That includes the “Fairness in Women’s Sports Act,” a 2021 law specifying that an athletic team or sport designated for females, women, or girls may not be open to students of the male gender, based on the student’s biological sex listed on the student’s official birth certificate at the time of birth. The law applies those requirements to interscholastic, intercollegiate, intramural, or club athletic teams or sponsored by a public secondary school, high school, college, or university.
There is also the “Safety and Private Spaces Act” signed into law in 2023 providing restrooms and changing facilities for exclusive use by females or males.
Kim Jones, the co-founder of the Independent Council on Women’s Sports (ICONS), said at the news conference that U.S. Masters Swimming continues to allow biological men to compete with women, and said the essential question is whether women and girls deserve access to fair sports — yes or no?
“The state of Florida and AG Uthmeier believes that answer is yes and, unequivocally, so do we.”
The Phoenix reached out to U.S. Masters Swimming but did not receive an immediate response.
The Florida LGBTQ+ Democratic Caucus released a statement later on Tuesday, saying Uthmeier was “trying to scare Floridians with yet another imaginary transgender threat.”
“While Floridians struggle with unaffordable housing, skyrocketing insurance premiums, a crumbling education system, attacks on reproductive rights, and the outrage of Alligator Auschwitz, the Attorney General is fighting about swim meets.” said Kristen Browde, President of the Florida LGBTQ+ Democratic Caucus. “This isn’t leadership. It’s political theater, an attempt to distract from the real problems facing Floridans.”
Browde, an attorney, added that Uthmeier’s threat of legal action is without legal merit, “The State of Florida has no legal standing to sue simply because it disagrees with a private organization’s inclusive values.”
Equality Florida later issued their own response to Uthmeier’s press conference.
“Attorney General Uthmeier is pulling straight from the DeSantis playbook: When you’re in trouble, blame trans people. Uthmeier is scapegoating trans people as a strategy to deflect and distract from the intense public scrutiny over the $450 million in corrupt no-bid contracts handed to GOP donors for the creation of the Everglades detention camp, his unprecedented contempt of court charges, and his alleged role in laundering $10 million in public Medicaid settlement money through Hope Florida to illegally fund political campaigns.”
The city of San Francisco’s Office of Transgender Initiatives, a local government agency that supports transgender women competing in sports, has said that rather than protecting women’s sports, “bans on trans athletes encourages bullying, discrimination, and even violence against women and girls. These bans can lead to invasive screenings that violate privacy and increase the risk of abuse.”
Public polling
However, public polling consistently shows that most Americans oppose transgendered athletes competing in women’s sports. A Gallup survey released last month reported that 69% of Americans believe that transgender women should only be allowed to play on sports teams that match their birth gender. An NBC News poll conducted of over 19,000 adults in April found that 75% of respondents do not believe transgender athletes should be permitted to participate in women’s sports.
President Donald Trump issued an executive order in February entitled, “Keeping Men out of Women’s Sports.” And last week his administration sued the California Department of Education for allowing transgender girls to compete on girls’ sports teams, alleging that policy violates federal law.
More than two dozen states have laws barring transgender women and girls from participating in certain sports competitions, according to the Associated Press. Some of the policies have been blocked in court.
This story was updated with a responses from both Equality Florida and the Florida LGBTQ+ Democratic Caucus.
Florida Phoenix is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Florida Phoenix maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Michael Moline for questions: info@floridaphoenix.com.
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