Menstrual Cycle Questions Dropped By FL Sports Board After Pushback

GAINESVILLE, FL — The Florida High School Athletic Association on Thursday voted to drop a proposed policy requiring female athletes to provide information about their menstrual cycles to play sports, according to a report by The Miami Herald.

The organization's board of directors voted 14-2 during an emergency meeting to remove questions about a player's menstrual cycle from the form, the Herald reported.

The decision followed intense criticism from students, parents, advocacy organizations and even lawmakers. In an email to the board, one parent called it "a gross and an extremely sexist invasion of privacy," according to the Herald.

• RELATED: Mandatory Menstrual Cycle Reporting Possible For FL Female Athletes

Student athletes must now submit a form to schools indicating they are healthy enough to play. The form will need to be signed by a doctor, the Herald reported.

Before Thursday's vote, the board was considering a new draft of the state's Preparticipation Physical Evaluation Form approved by the organization's sports medicine advisory committee in January, according to The Associated Press.

If approved, athletes would have been required to say if they've had a menstrual cycle, at what age they had their first menstrual period, their most recent menstrual period and "how many periods [the student has] had in the past 12 months."

More than two dozen Florida lawmakers protested the proposed requirements in a letter sent to the organization earlier this week, CNN reported.

“The rights of all girls in sports, including their right to privacy, must be respected as afforded in the State of Florida’s Constitution,” the legislators wrote.

In comments provided to the Herald, Maxx Fenning, president of PRISM, a South Florida nonprofit organization that provides sexual health information to LGBTQ+ youth, called the proposal "an extremely invasive mode of gleaning into someone's reproductive history."

"This is clearly an effort to further stigmatize and demonize transgender people in sports [and] meant to further exclude people who aren't assigned female at birth in girls' sports," Fenning told the Herald. "Beyond that, I think there's concern among LGBTQ+ and non-LGBTQ+ [students] alike."

The Florida High School Athletic Association is a private nonprofit organization. It is not a state agency under the purview of Gov. Ron DeSantis' office.