Miss North Florida Disqualified Over Transgender Contract

Kayleigh Bush, the 2024 Miss North Florida winner, has been removed from her position and disqualified from the Miss America national competition after refusing to sign a revised contract that defines eligible participants to include transgender women who have undergone specific surgeries.

Bush, 20, was crowned in September 2024. Four weeks later, the Miss America organization updated its contract to broaden the definition of "female" for applicants. The new language states that eligible contestants must be unmarried women aged 18 to 28, where "female" includes "a born female or an individual who has fully completed Sex Reassignment Surgery via Vaginoplasty from male to female with supporting medical documentation and records." Bush declined to sign, explaining that the clause conflicted with her personal beliefs about gender.

"I was asked to sign a contract that was different than the first one that I had agreed to, because they had changed it four weeks after I rightly won," Bush said in an interview. "So I didn't lose my crown because I broke a rule. I lost the crown because I was unwilling to rewrite the truth." She added that she could not agree "that a little boy could...