Florida could sue the Miss America organization for false advertising if it continues allowing castrated boys to compete in its pageants, state Attorney General James Uthmeier advised the company in a letter Friday.
“These organizations cannot operate under the false and misleading title of ‘Miss’ if indeed they are open to male participants,” the letter reads, continuing: “By promoting their competitions as female-only and then surreptitiously allowing certain men to compete, Miss America and Miss Florida are engaging in a wrongful bait-and-switch advertising scheme targeting young women.”
On their respective websites, Miss America and Miss Florida require participants to be “female.” No additional language or imagery suggests “female” might refer to anything other than biological sex.
So thought Kayleigh Bush when she competed in — and won — the Miss North Florida pageant in late 2024. But when she leafed through her participation contract for the next stage of competition, the Miss Florida pageant, she found the agreement defined “female” to include castrated boys.
The exact language, per Liberty Counsel, reads: “‘Female’ means 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, with Liberty Counsel’s help, tried to negotiate, arguing the contract’s definition of “female” violated her religious belief that sex is binary and immutable.
When Miss America refused to budge, Bush chose to abdicate her privileges as Miss North Florida 2025 and forfeit her right to compete in Miss Florida rather than agree to compete against boys and promote sex rejecting surgeries.
Attorney General Uthmeier believes the Miss America organization deceived Kayleigh and the general public.
“Despite advertising that Miss America and Miss Florida are beauty competitions open only to female competitors, your organizations misled Kayleigh and the public by allowing certain men to compete as well,” he alleged in Friday’s letter, noting false advertising can include “a representation or omission that is likely to deceive a consumer acting reasonably in the same circumstances.”
Bush would not have competed in the pageant had she known she would have to compete against men.
To Uthmeier’s other point, the Miss America organization clearly did not want their participation policies in the spotlight. The company threatened to sue Bush after she alluded to them in a February interview with TMZ.
“It’s disappointing, because Miss America has been honoring women for over a hundred years and, now, they can’t even define what a woman is,” she told the outlet.
Uthmeier gave Miss America until May 1 to publicly specify who can participate in their competitions. If he had his way, boys wouldn’t be allowed to participate at all.
“By misleading Kayleigh and other Florida women, Miss America and Miss Florida undermine the value they claim to advance — female well-being,” the attorney general concludes.
“Both organizations should disallow men from competing in their pageants.”
Daily Citizen is a news division of Focus on the Family that provides a faith-based perspective to counter the mainstream media’s anti-Christian bias.
