"This is about fairness," Noem stated on "Fox News Sunday." "This is about making sure that our girls have a chance to be successful and to compete, to win scholarships, and potentially go on to play professional sports beyond that. We want them to have the opportunity to do that.
"Title IX fought for that years and years ago and I've been doing this for years, which started, man, almost five years ago now in the sport of rodeo, where we protected girls' events," she went on. "So now I'm bringing a bill to the legislature that will be the strongest bill in the nation in protecting fairness in girls' sports, and I'm hopeful that my legislators will support it."
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On Friday, a South Dakota legislative committee approved a bill championed by Noem that limits collegiate and K-12 participation to the sex identified on an athlete's birth certificate. If it passes the legislature, South Dakota will become the 10th state to restrict transgender people from contesting on teams that match their gender identity.
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The bill makes good on a promise Noem delivered when she controversially vetoed a similar bill from the state legislature last year. After initially backing House Bill 1217, Noem sent a style and form veto back to the legislature with many requests, including removing a provision designed to shield collegiate sports. The Republican-led legislature eventually let the bill die in the Senate and the governor tried to supplant that bill with executive orders to protect K-12 sports.
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Noem had claimed that, unlike elementary and secondary school regulations, collegiate limitations would form an unworkable patchwork for athletic organizations that operate at the national level.
"I did not veto a bill," Noem declared Sunday. "What I did was I asked my legislature for changes, and they rejected it. So immediately that very same day I put executive orders in place to protect girls' sports."
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Noem defended her new proposed bill to ban abortions after a fetal heartbeat is detected, or around six weeks, which includes a provision that would punish people who assist someone in getting an abortion with a minimum $10,000 penalty.
"The South Dakota law is different," she announced. "It is modeled after the Texas law, and it says when that heartbeat is detected, that then abortion is not an option. And frankly, since we got the Texas law in place, lives have been saved."
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