Miss America pageant officials have agreed that contestants in their competitions must in fact be a Miss, not a Mr. , bowing to biological reality and the threat that their prior policy could violate state deceptive advertising law.
According to WND, the shift comes after sustained pressure from Liberty Counsel, which has represented Kayleigh Bush, the 2025 Miss North Florida who was stripped of her scholarship when she refused to compete against men. Liberty Counsel reports that the Miss America Organization has now informed Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier that it has altered its contract language to clarify what constitutes a woman, after previously stretching that definition to include biological males.
The notification was prompted by a letter from Uthmeier warning the Miss America Pageant that it might be violating Floridas deceptive advertising law by promoting a female-only competition while surreptitiously allowing gender-confused males to participate. The attorney generals office underscored that such a hidden policy, at odds with the pageants public image, could mislead both contestants and the public.
Liberty Counsel Chairman Mat Staver hailed the reversal as a victory for common sense and for Bush, who had refused to sign a contract that redefined womanhood to accommodate radical gender ideology. We are pleased that Miss America has finally come to its senses and revised its contract to remove the ridiculous statement that a boy can be a girl. A boy cannot be a girl. Miss America now knows what a woman isa common sense understanding that Kayleigh Bush knew instinctually. Miss America should now reinstate the benefits of Bushs crown, including the scholarship that she rightfully deserves, explained Mat Staver, the chief of Liberty Counsel.
After Bush won her title in the fall of 2024, the Miss Florida program blocked her from enjoying any of the benefits associated with her crown when she refused to endorse the contracts false definition of female as including gender-confused males, Liberty Counsel explained. Bush objected on the grounds that the language violated both her religious convictions and Florida law, which recognize biological distinctions that activists on the left have tried to erase.
Liberty Counsel repeatedly contacted the Miss America Organization demanding that it correct its policy, but officials had until now refused to budge. That resistance only hardened concerns that the pageant was quietly embracing an ideological agenda at odds with its traditional role as a celebration of womanhood.
In its response to Uthmeier, the law office for the Miss America Organization now defines biological woman as a person having two x chromosomes. This definition aligns with basic science and with the expectations of contestants and audiences who reasonably assume that Miss refers to a female, not a male who has undergone cosmetic or surgical changes.
Originally, the organization claimed the competition was open to someone who has fully completed sex reassignment surgerya standard rooted in gender ideology rather than biology. The revised provision now states that participants must be a naturally born female, meaning someone born female or born an intersex female individual, defined as one born with two x chromosomes
WND previously reported on Uthmeiers warning about the pageants anti-science agenda, which mirrored the broader push by progressive activists to blur biological distinctions in law and culture. That agenda has been aggressively advanced at the federal level, as Joe Biden spent four years in the White House elevating transgender ideology as a top policy priority, often at the expense of womens privacy, safety, and opportunities.
Uthmeier noted that nothing in Miss Americas public-facing materials defined girls, women, or female as anything other than biological females, nor did they suggest that a subset of males would be allowed to compete until the private contract was presented, Liberty Counsel explained. He warned that this bait-and-switch scheme could violate Floridas Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act, which prohibits misleading consumers through hidden terms that contradict public representations.
The attorney general gave the pageant until May 1 to correct its statements, a deadline that appears to have forced the organization to choose between ideology and legal accountability. For Bush and for many Americans who still believe that words like woman and girl have objective meaning, the change marks a rare instance in which a major cultural institution has stepped back from the brink and acknowledged biological truth over fashionable dogma.
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