Florida Sports Board Removes Menstruation Questions From Medical Form

Florida’s governing body for high school sports voted on Thursday to remove all questions about menstruation from medical forms required for student athletes, after an uproar that reflected anxieties about digital and reproductive privacy.

Officials said that the form had been used for about 20 years, but the optional menstruation questions were spotlighted after Roe v. Wade was overturned and Florida introduced new restrictions on how gender identity and sexual orientation could be discussed in schools.

An October report in The Palm Beach Post highlighted the questions, which included “When was your most recent menstrual period?” and caused controversy on social media. Some critics worried about the implications for reproductive rights, and others, including parents, were more broadly worried about the privacy of their children’s data.

After months of backlash, the board of directors of the Florida High School Athletic Association held an emergency meeting on Thursday and voted 14 to 2 in favor of a proposal to remove the menstruation questions from a four-page medical history questionnaire.

Under the proposal, the first three pages of the form will be kept by the student’s health provider and not shared with the school. The fourth page will be shared with the school and shows only whether a doctor determined the student was medically eligible to play sports.

According to a board agenda item, the changes to the form were intended to protect “a student-athlete’s privacy while including pertinent medical information a health care provider at a member school would need access to.”

The association, which represents 800 public and private schools, said the changes would take effect in the 2023-24 school year.

The requirement that a primary care physician sign off on a student’s participation in school sports is standard across the United States. The Florida form was developed by the Florida High School Athletic Association and is used by more than 60 school districts across the state.

Florida, Texas and Iowa are among a dozen states that ask questions about menstruation on participation forms that are kept on file with schools. Physical education forms in Colorado, California, Georgia and Maryland ask about menstruation but advise that information should be kept with the physician in the student’s medical chart.

The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that doctors collect menstruation data from student athletes, but says that the only form that should be submitted to schools or sports organizations is one that indicates whether a doctor has determined that the student is medically eligible to play sports.

Concerns about the medical form were raised in August at a more than three-hour Palm Beach County School District meeting. The parents there did not take issue with the menstruation questions, but some challenged the district’s use of new athletic department software, called Aktivate, to collect the students’ medical forms.

One parent who expressed concerns about Aktivate was Jennifer Showalter. She was running for a school board seat in an election that she ultimately lost.

“Parents, like you’ve heard tonight, do not approve of their children’s health data floating in the web because they know breaches happen all the time,” Ms. Showalter said. “And worse, they know their child’s information will simply be sold to other companies as third-party vendors through our school system.”

Aktivate says on its website that it is compliant with the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, a federal law that protects student privacy.

After parents raised these concerns, the Palm Beach County School District in August brought back paper options for submitting the medical forms and gave any parent who had submitted the forms electronically the option to have them returned. The school district also said it would encourage the high school association to remove the questions regarding menstruation and to make other changes.

The uproar over student medical records came amid a flurry of Republican legislation related to gender signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis, including a ban on abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy and the Parental Rights in Education Act — opponents refer to it as the “Don’t Say Gay” act — which, in part, constrains instruction on gender and sexuality. In November, the Florida Board of Medicine also banned gender-affirming care for transgender youth.