FLORIDA, USA — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is responding this week to the heated debate over transgender women in sports.
He took a strong stance against trans athlete Lia Thomas winning the NCAA's 500-yard freestyle, saying in a resolution:
"Florida rejects the NCAA's efforts to destroy women's athletics, disapproves of the NCAA elevating ideology over biology, and takes offense at the NCAA trying to make others complicit in a lie."
He went on to say that the state recognizes Sarasota's Emma Weyant as the best women's swimmer in the race.
First Coast News sat down with a local Olympic swimmer and civil rights attorney who shared her unique perspective on the issues.
She may have earned four medals in the pool back at the 1984 Olympic Games, but Nancy Hogshead-Makar is still fighting for equality in women’s sports and is the head of Champion Women, which advocates for girls and women in sports.
"I'm really concerned that Lia Thomas is setting the cause of transgender people back decades," Hogshead-Makar said. "She personally did follow the rules, those were the NCAA rules. But, it's a place that everybody can see this is just not fair."
She believes Thomas' race times show there is a gender-linked advantage.
"Women's sports matter," she explained. "We need to make sure that the boundaries of the girls and women's category are very clearly defined in the same way that a weight category or an age category is very clearly defined."
Hogshead-Makar is frustrated over the sharp divide on the topic.
"This has become either a right-wing or left-wing issue," she said. "That it's either, you know, full on progressive, you got to swallow the whole thing that trans women are women. There cannot be any exception whatsoever. We're going to ignore biology and science. Or, alternatively, you're going to use sport as the vehicle to express trans hate. And that's exactly what Governor Desantis did."
She believes the current culture debate needs to shift to a conversation.
"I automatically go to the next step, which is: What are the ways that we can accommodate trans athletes so that they can participate in sports?" Hogshead-Makar posed.
Hogshead-Makar says it's important that any accomodation put in place doesn't take opportunities away from those who were born female.