Tracking Menstrual Cycles
Florida Board Decides Against Tracking High School Athletes' Menstrual Cycles
Parents Magazine - February 2023
The mere proposal still raises critical questions about privacy concerns, government overreach, and attacks on transgender athletes.
The Florida High School Athletic Association (FHSAA) held an emergency meeting Thursday, Feb 9, after receiving significant public blowback to their considerations of making students' menstrual cycle information mandatory on athlete eligibility paperwork. The FHSAA oversees interscholastic athletic programs across the state of Florida and had been considering adopting a form that would have made these previously optional questions mandatory.
The questions, masked under a concern for students' health, would have forced athletes to disclose personal, private medical information about whether the student had a menstrual cycle, when their first menstrual period was, the dates of their most recent period, and the number of periods they had in the previous 12 months. This data would have conceivably been accessible by coaches, school districts, and third-party digital platforms.