The City Hall of Cuiabá sanctioned a law prohibiting the participation of transgender women in official women’s sports competitions in the city.
The new law, signed by Mayor Abílio Brunini (PL) this Monday (15), establishes that biological sex becomes the only criterion valid for organizing teams by gender in the capital of Mato Grosso.
The rule also prevents transgender men from participating in male competitions. “Transgender people are guaranteed to participate only in teams that correspond to their biological sex.”
The text sanctioned also provides that the Federation, Entity or Sports Club that fails to comply with the law will be fined R $ 5,000. Transgender athletes who omit their biological sex at inscriptions can be framed as an analogous case to doping and banished from Cuiabá -based competitions, both public and organized by private institutions.
The project authored by Councilman Rafael Ralli (PL) was approved on August 12 at the City Council.
According to Ralli, the reason for the project is the protection of women. “It is clear that testosterone in the male body, by the amount it is up to 18 years old, forms a muscles, a physiology, a different biology from a woman’s body,” said the parliamentarian.
“Invariably, it is men who see this possibility of saying or becoming a woman to compete in a sport that if it was against men, success he would not have,” he added.
According to Ralli, the approval of the project in the Cuiabá Chamber was quiet “not only because he had no petista”. “There is no very ingrained leftist. Most are conservative,” he said.
He said he hoped approval will encourage other Brazilian cities to adopt similar laws, noting that legislation on this topic were recently passed in the United States and the United Kingdom.
In July, the US Olympic and Paralympic Committee also restricted the participation of trans women in women’s competitions, based on a presidential decree of Donald Trump published in February on the subject.
