FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
JACKSON, Miss. – Today Governor Reeves signed into law Senate Bill 2536, blocking transgender girls from playing sports.
SB 2536 isn’t about protecting fairness in women’s sports. It’s about erasing and excluding trans people from participation in all aspects of public life. It’s about creating solutions to problems that don’t exist. Not once have the supporters of this bill cited an actual dispute over this issue in Mississippi.
Today’s circus is not new. Unfortunately, diversion and scapegoating have become routine for politicians. When elected leaders aren’t up to the real problems of our state, they tend to deflect and do anything to get people talking about something other than failing water systems, hospital closures, and teacher shortages.
What makes SB 2536 so much worse than the routine fear-mongering is that it targets children. That cannot be lost in this discussion. Whatever your politics, we should all agree that ostracizing middle and high school kids is not something to celebrate.
The governor has many other issues that deserve his attention. Instead of paying our educators what they are worth, or offering voters more opportunities to register and vote, he and the legislators who support this bill chose to use Mississippi students, the children of their constituents, as political pawns.
It is our task now to ensure Mississippi schools respect and protect trans students, who only want to be themselves.
