Following a trend in other GOP-led states, lawmakers also will send Ducey a bill they call the “Save Women’s Sports Act,” which prohibits transgender athletes from competing on women’s and girls’ teams at all public schools and some private schools.
A spokeswoman for Ducey declined CNN’s request for comment.
The laws are part of a larger movement by conservative lawmakers to impose restrictions on the lives of transgender youth in the US. LGBTQ advocates have strongly opposed the bans, arguing they further marginalize a vulnerable community and could cause serious harm to a group that suffers from uniquely high rates of suicide.
Some medical groups, including the American Psychiatric Association, have also come out against laws like SB 1138, with the group saying last year that “patients and their physicians, not policymakers, should be the ones to make decisions together about what care is best for them.”
Sports ban also heads to governor
The sports ban, also given final passage by lawmakers in Arizona on Thursday, mirrors others enacted around the country in recent years. It applies to teams “sponsored by a public school or a private school whose students or teams compete against a public school.”
“Athletic teams or sports designated for ‘females,’ ‘women’ or ‘girls’ may not be open to students of the male sex,” the bill says. Though the measure mentions “biological sex,” it doesn’t define what that means. Similar bills in other states have stipulated that “biological sex” is defined as the sex marked on a student’s original birth certificate.
While sex is a category that refers broadly to physiology, a person’s gender is an innate sense of identity. The factors that go into determining the sex listed on a birth certificate may include anatomy, genetics and hormones, and there is broad natural variation in each of these categories. For this reason, critics have said the language of “biological sex,” as used in this legislation, is overly simplistic and misleading.
So far this year, GOP governors in Iowa and South Dakota have signed bills establishing similar bans. Last year, Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Mississippi, Montana, Tennessee, Texas and West Virginia enacted similar sports bans, infuriating LGBTQ advocates, who argue lawmakers are seeking to address an issue where there isn’t one.
CNN’s Hannah Sarisohn contributed to this report.