Florida Governor Desantis refuses to accept transgender swimmer's victory, proclaims runner-up as the winner

Last week, Ron Desantis, Florida Governor, refused to acknowledge the victory of swimmer Lia Thomas, a transgender person, in the women's 500-yard freestyle at the NCAA championships.

Lia Thomas, who swims for the University of Pennsylvania, had finished the race in 4 minutes 33.24 seconds to secure the title. Emma Weyant, who was second, finished the race 1.75 seconds after Lia.

However, in his signed proclamation, DeSantis declared Emma Weyant, the silver medallist in the Tokyo Olympics who represents the University of Virginia, as the "rightful winner."


On his Twitter post, sharing proclamation, the Republican Governor also condemned the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) for letting Thomas participate in the championship. According to him, NCAA is destroying women's opportunities in athletics and making a mockery of the integrity of its championships by allowing men into women's sports.

Lia Thomas created history by becoming the first known transgender athlete to win an NCAA swimming title.

The NCAA's current regulations necessitate that Trans women athletes should take one year of hormone replacement therapy (HRT) to become eligible to compete in women's sports. Thomas swam for the men's team of Pennsylvanian for three seasons and decided to get hormone replacement therapy in 2019.

Regardless of Ron DeSantis' announcement of rejecting Thomas' victory, it did not change the outcome due to NCAA making sure that judging is as per the intended rules.

Last year, DeSantis had signed legislation to prohibit transgender athletes in Florida from participating in high school and college-level women's tournaments.

Thus far this year, South Dakota and Iowa have approved the legislation to ban transgender females from competing on their schools and colleges' sports teams consistent with their gender identity.

Last year, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Montana, Texas, Tennessee, and West Virginia had put similar sports bans, attracting aggravation from LGBTQ supporters.

The ongoing debate over allowing transgender athletes, mainly girls and women to participate in women's sports has become a highly talked about topic in the past few years, especially amongst old-school thinkers