Arizona May Ban Transgender Girls from Women’s Sports

A group of Republican lawmakers in Arizona are pushing a legislative proposal that would ban transgender girls and women from playing on high school and college sports teams for girls and women. The bill does not cover transgender boys playing on men’s teams. Rep. Nancy Barto, the legislation’s sponsor, said that allowing transgender girls to compete is unfair. “When this is allowed, it discourages female participation in athletics and, worse, it can result in women and girls being denied crucial educational and financial opportunities,” Barto said. The legislation includes a three-part test for determining a student’s sex, including “internal and external reproductive anatomy,” the student’s “normal endogenously produced levels of testosterone,” and finally “an analysis of the student’s genetic makeup.” George Khalaf, a political consultant for Barto, said that the purpose of the third part of the test is to ensure that even those who have undergone gender reassignment surgery will not be allowed to play.  “As far as I understand, there’s no way that hormonal treatments or what is medically available today would alter someone’s genetic makeup,” Khalaf said. Chase Strangio, a transgender-rights lawyer with the ACLU, said that the laws would harm the LGBTQ community. “It is hard to imagine why state legislators have decided to prioritize barring transgender young people from sharing in the benefit of secondary school athletics or disrupting medical treatment consistent with prevailing standards of care. But here we are,” Stangio said. [Associated Press; Capitol Media Services]

AIR QUALITY | Eleven states have filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, alleging that the agency has failed to reduce air pollution in areas of states where smog makes the air quality fall beneath federal standards. The Clean Air Act requires the EPA to approve or deny state plans for meeting air quality standards within 12 months, but the lawsuit asserts that it has been longer than that since the states last heard from the EPA. The majority of the states involved are coastal, including California, Maine, and New York, and nearly 80 million people live in the areas in question. Environmentalists, including Robert Ukeiley, a lawyer with the Center for Biological Diversity, blame the oil and gas industries for the worse air quality. “Oil and fracked gas drilling is a major contributor to the smog that’s poisoning the air for millions of people across the U.S. The Trump EPA is working overtime to protect the polluters responsible for the smog that’s triggering asthma attacks and other serious health problems that routinely send people to the hospital,” Ukeiley said. The EPA does not comment on pending litigation. [Courthouse News Service]

REDISTRICTING | Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers signed an executive order creating an independent redistricting commission for the state, although the group will not have binding authority to implement their maps. Under the state constitution, maps are drawn by the legislature and signed by the governor. Evers, a Democrat, wants a nonpartisan group of citizens to serve on the “People’s Maps Commission,” tasked with touring the state and drawing districts that are contiguous and free from gerrymandering. "People should be able to choose their elected officials, not the other way around," Evers said. Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, a Republican, called the governor’s order a “phony, faulty process” and said that the Republican-controlled state legislature will draw the maps in 2021 after the 2020 Census. "They can create whatever maps they want to, but the legislature is going to go through the same process that we always have," Vos said. In the past, when Wisconsin has had split party control between the governor’s office and the legislature, disagreements over maps have led to prolonged lawsuits. Democratic Attorney General Josh Kaul said he hoped that the legislature would consider the maps suggested by the independent commission so that lawsuits could be avoided in 2021. "We have seen all sorts of money wasted, taxpayer dollars wasted, on litigation about what our maps should be," Kaul said. [Wisconsin Public Radio; ABC News

PRISON CLOSURE | Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves said he will close part of the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman because of unsafe conditions. The move comes after more than 10 people have died in the state’s prison system since December, with most of those deaths—including both stabbings and suicides—occurring at Parchman’s Unit 29. "I have instructed the Mississippi Department of Corrections to begin the necessary work to start closing Parchman's most notorious unit, Unit 29. I've seen enough. We have to turn the page. This is the first step, and I have asked the department to begin the preparations to make it happen safely, justly and quickly,” Reeves said. Rapper Yo Gotti, who along with Jay-Z recently sued the state Department of Corrections over inhumane conditions in the state prison system, said that Reeves hasn’t gone far enough but that the “plan to close down a Parchman prison unit that has caused devastating deaths is a necessary first step.” [Clarion Ledger; Associated Press; CBS News]

EMOJIS | A state lawmaker in Vermont introduced a bill that would make the state the first in the country to allow emojis on license plates. State Rep. Rebecca White, a Democrat, introduced the measure to allow drivers to select one of six different emojis for their license plates. The six emojis that would be available were not cited in the legislation. The emojis would not take the place of standard letters or numbers on the plates, but would instead be additional vanity features. [NBC 5]