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Kristi Noem Vetos Bill that Bans Males from Destroying Female Sports
South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem has vetoed (twice) the Fairness in Women’s Sports Act. But she’s claiming that she didn’t veto the bill. The very constitutional provision she cites in her letter (the right) states that what she did was veto the bill! “Bills returned shall be treated in the same manner as vetoed bills.” But she seems to be pretending that the legislature vetoed the bill by not complying with her demand to allow men to compete in women’s college sports. Or something. I’m somewhat confused!
But one thing’s for certain: She’s pretending she didn’t veto the bill, even though she did. It’s not enough to throw girls and young women under the bus, she’s gaslighting her constituents (and the rest of us).
What a disappointment. What is she thinking?
Published in Politics
I think the
NAACPNCAA is using extortion. I wouldn’t be surprised if they threatened to block any SD student from college athletic scholarships if she didn’t veto.She’s now off the GOP shortlist.
(corrected error)
NCAA?
I agree. DeSantis had better start looking for another Veep . . .
The real solution to this is to field nothing but men claiming they are women to teams. I’d love to fill a woman’s team with men. Championship here I come! Plenty of second rate men who can still totally crush women. They can win all the games, get sweet sweet scholarships, and then decide they are men again. Unless they go pro. Imagine the power of a WNBA team of men! Again, easy wins and easy championship.
They only way I see to win this fight is force the other side to acknowledge how deranged it is. PUt men on women’s team. It is the only way. She does not have the guts to do that.
Our side is full of losers.
Look forward to the Olympics and how they will handle this as well as drug testing.
It came down to dollars withheld if .
Damn doing the right thing.
She should be off the shortlist. Despite the media narratives, this issue has a level of cross party appeal. An awful lot of Independents and Democrats think it is Ok to ban transgenders from Women’s sports.
the latest split is
74-15 Republicans supporting the ban
49-33 Independents supporting the ban
40-42 Democrats oppose the ban by 2 points- this is in the Margin of Error so a statistical tie.
Not really sure what group of voters Noem thinks she is catering too.
Ignoring reality has become a winning strategy this year:
“Hey, I saw her do the thing with my own eyes.”
“No, you didn’t really see that. The fact checkers say she did something else.”
“No, really, here’s the video.”
“Nope. Didn’t happen.”
Media: “Despite what a few QAnon types might claim, she didn’t actually do the thing.”
**FBI knocks on the front door.** “Sir, we’d like to discuss your erroneous posting about her having done a thing.”
NCAA doesn’t listen to voters.
OK, I guess it is up to me to mount a (weak) defense of Governor Noem. (Even Mrs Rodin is on the “she screwed up” wagon, so I know I am on my own here.) Governor Noem has strong credentials in promoting girl’s and women’s interests, so I think her heart is in the right place. The question is one of strategy. The legislature picked their’s and Governor Noem picked hers. Politically Governor Noem’s strategy appears to be a loser — not on its merits, necessarily, but certainly amongst the conservative punditry. And she has not been able to break through the narrative that she caved to the NCAA.
Let’s look at her presidential prospects: Assuming she has such ambitions, they have certainly taken a hit. Not irretrievable given the amount of time between now and 2023, but certainly a negative turn. Now let’s look at a President Noem dealing with Congress. What does this event say about her approach and firmness? She seems to be looking at a big picture and trying to move practical politics in opposition to “woke” entities and corporations. She is trying to keep out of increasingly unreliable courts at every level. Lawfare has been the “woke” weapon of choice. Why step in it if there is another way? At the moment the conservative punditry is not on board with her strategy decision. But then, again, where is their “skin in the game”? So, too, for individual lawmakers who will not be defending the law in the chosen forum of the “woke”. I can’t fault her. But I know others can, and will.
This is not a defense of Noem, but the SD legislature could’ve override her veto by a two-thirds vote and did not.
Here is something I don’t understand about her defense of the veto. When she sent the bill back to the legislature and went on an explanation tour on all the talking head shows, one of the things she emphasized was her support for separate boys and girls divisions in 4-H rodeo. Now in South Dakota, there are only three events where boys and girls compete in the same activity: goat tying, breakaway and flag race. In fact, there are plenty more events where boys either should be able to compete, or do compete through other organizations or in other states. In a whole host of other equestrian events, boys and girls compete against each other. There are no boy/girl male/female show jumping, eventing or dressage divisions anywhere. It’s a weak argument. Why shouldn’t boys be able to compete in team roping at the 4-H competitions in South Dakota? There are professional team roping competitions for men. Her veto and defense were not well-thought-out on a purely sports level.
Yeah, them
Cruz. Cruz as VP has a longer play than Cruz as president.
I expect they don’t, but I’d figure SD voters would support the state bringing a lawsuit against the NCAA if they threatened to block SD students from college teams and scholarships. There is bound to be a valid strategy with interstate commerce.
I don’t know if they would have “standing” if the NCAA is considered a private organization. But the main problem likely facing Noem as with other governors and even politicians in general, is the fickleness of voters. RIGHT NOW they might be expecting her to stand tall etc, but as soon as Junior or Juniorette doesn’t get a scholarship somewhere because of NCAA, they’ll blame it on Noem even after insisting that she do what they PREVIOUSLY insisted she do. And then they might elect a Dim next time, who will turn everything around and Juniorette STILL won’t get a scholarship because the trans men will all outperform her, but hey, that won’t be the VOTERS’ fault! Of course not!
My understanding — and anyone please correct me if I’m wrong — is that the South Dakota state constitution contains a provision which allows the governor to modify a bill and send it back to the legislature for approval. If the legislature then approves the modified bill on a simple majority vote (not the two-thirds required to override a veto), then the bill becomes law.
Confusingly, this is referred to as a “style and form veto” but, again, is not subject to the standard two-thirds veto override.
So it’s fair that she might say she didn’t veto the bill, per se. She apparently struck the portion of the bill dealing with college athletes.
It’s easy to see why. College athletics is big business, and having the state blacklisted by collegiate sports — and possibly risking federal student loans and grants — could be catastrophic. She might have concluded, correctly I think, that the real danger of boys competing against girls is at the high school level, and so supported that restriction, but wasn’t willing to risk wrecking collegiate athletics in her state.
I would have preferred that she supported the legislature and took the hard stand, but I understand her decision.
I still think she’s pretty terrific. I think we should resist the temptation to write off promising conservatives who have been exemplary on other issues simply because they fall short occasionally. That one-strike-you’re-out approach pretty much guarantees that we’ll have very few people left who are willing to take a stand based on their honest assessment if there’s a risk that they’ll offend someone on their side. I want guts more than I want complete agreement. She has guts in spades.
I remain a Kristi Noem enthusiast.
[Update: Per ctlaw’s comment below, it does seem that the Governor may have abused the “style and form” veto. Perhaps that’s common in South Dakota, or maybe she just blew it, or maybe she objected to some minor detail of style and form in hopes that the legislature would read between the lines and make the bill acceptable to her. Maybe that kind of thing is done there. Or, again, maybe she just goofed.]
There may already be SD precedent, but, if not, this could be a constitutional crisis.
The SD Constitution says (underlining added):
Are we dealing with a matter of substance and not style/form? If so, does the failure to veto mean the bill already became law?
So they compete in horseshoes, why not boxing and rugby? The demands of every sport are different. Horsemanship rewards small jockeys and, it’s not my area, but a female’s lower center of balance probably has some advantages as well. Mixed sexes doesn’t work in tennis or basketball or soccer or football or speed swimming. Noem is trying to nuance a core issue. She has hopped the train to Bizzaro World, cutting that baby in half, and I have no sympathy for her. Not everything in life can be splitting the difference.
Is she all hype? She may be, I don’t really know her. But she has done dramatic harm to her reputation. I don’t think I could trust her.
The NCAA is the elephant in the room. They could exclude South Dakota college athletes from competing by not allowing South Dakota schools to compete in college sports. They would essentially reduce South Dakota college sports to club status. This might bring lawsuit after lawsuit and that’s extremely expensive. The good news for athletic lawyers is that paying the mortgage on their golf condos looks pretty good.
I’m agreeing with @Rodin and @henryracette here. It seems to me she was trying to look out for the State’s college athletes and state-sponsored events with her action. Maybe she could have handled it differently, but she is an elected official with responsibility for the state and all its citizens. She’s not a TV or internet pundit who can fire off in any direction with no concern for anything but her own ego.
If she’s worried about boycotts and such, why doesn’t she just say that? Why does she force her supporters to try to read her mind?
Maybe because “our side” wouldn’t care, and “the other side” would accuse her of making stuff up?
In addition to the NCAA the new Woke DOJ could also pile on South Dakota. It will probably get more interesting if a big school like Notre Dame is pushed to enter the transgender fight. As an aside congrats to the ND Fencing squad for winning their 11th national championship. It appears ND will have 5 students on the US Olympic team.
But is that what the governor is doing? She was on Tucker Carlson, and she explained her position. Unless someone here is from her state and has read the bill, I think a lot of panties are getting all twisted around.
Many legal propositions sound great in a 90 second sound byte. That sound byte is ubiquitous over radio, across page on in a newspaper and TV. But in reality legalisms sound great in 90 seconde sound bytes, but when parsed out thoroughly, they are quirte different. She seemed to indicate she was saving women’s sports, although it doesn’t sound that way in the snippets we get from major news.
Bias disclosure: I’m pro Noem.
Don’t know if anyone’s linked them yet but here they are again.
SD HB1217.
The Governor’s letter returning HB1217.
So, having read both of those, I admire this about the South Dakota legislature’s style: their bill is readable and short. It is also a clumsy swipe at the problem with a blunt instrument. (I’m feeling charitable today.) Those … legislators blithely did what the entitled do – put a new burden on everyone. The more I think about it, the uglier I find Section 3. No, no charity.
Noem disappointed me too. She valued a place in national collegiate athletics over doing the obviously right thing. She could have asked for a fix on the overreaching oversight requirements, and might have gotten it.
It’s too early to make a decision about Noem’s long term usefulness to the movement.
I would try for 3 teams, male/male and female/female. and the third girlishboy/girlishboy. What a pitiful group of boys who can only win against a girl to make them PROUD again. If one of my grandsons pulled such a stunt, I’d take a board to his behind.
Maybe, depending on the top of the ticket. But if its DeSantis, I don’t think Cruz would be the way to go.
Saw Noem defend her position on Tucker Carlson’s show. She denies that what she did was a veto but in practice it had the identical effect. Looking at the comments here, there are some idiosyncrasies in SD law that might grant her her distinction. Her legal advice was that she would spend a lot of money in doomed lawsuits. Avoiding the enemy’s preferred field of battle, she has established what she has termed a coalition of states that will address the issue. The web site is not really on mission yet beyond email and donation gathering but if she gets traction and brings the heat against the NCAA and the Left more power to her. Right now she hasn’t moved the needle on a matter of fundamental science and fairness and if nothing more comes of it, that is what will be remembered.
There were objections that such a Title IX coalition already exists, but in a web search I could only find WoLF, a left wing feminist lobbying organization, not a coalition of states. Better to establish an institution that reflects your own values than to be coopted on an issue by a group with alien values and their own agenda. For my own part, I am a market guy who is all for developing competitors to corrupt institutions coopted by hostile force like the NCAA. That will take time, too.
If, in the end, she furthers the cause then I will salute her. This non-veto looks like she was tackled in the end zone for a safety to me.