STATE NEWS BRIEFS

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Uthmeier warns pageants over gender rules

The Miss America and Miss Florida groups that put on pageant competitions each year may have violated state law when they kicked out a contestant who refused to sign a contract opening up the competition to transgender females, according to Attorney General James Uthemeier.

Uthmeier sent a letter to the two organizations on April 10 alerting them they could have violated Florida’s Deceptive and Unfair Practices Act by marketing themselves as competitions for women but allowing transgender women to compete.

He cited the case of Kayleigh Bush, whose title of Miss North Florida 2025 was taken away after she declined to sign a contract that included contestants that are female or “an individual who has fully completed sex reassignment surgery via vaginoplasty (from male to female) with supporting medical documentation and records.”

“Both organizations made statements advertising that only females can compete, when in fact men are apparently also permitted to compete,” Uthmeier wrote.

The groups were given a May 1 deadline to “take corrective action” or face “enforcement action.”

“By misleading Kayleigh and other Florida women, Miss America and Miss Florida undermine the values they claim to advance – female well-being,” Uthmeier states. “Both organizations should disallow men from competing in their pageants.”

Measles cases stay flat

The number of measles cases in Florida has paused for the first time in months.

According to data from the Department of Health, there have been 144 cases of reported measles since April 4, the same number of reported measles cases as the previous weekly count on March 28.

There have been no new cases in Collier County, the epicenter of a measles outbreak that began in January at Ave Maria University, since March 28. The number of reported cases out of Collier has remained steady at 106, with the majority of cases affecting those 15 to 24 years old.

Florida now ranks fourth in the country as the state with the most measles cases for 2026. Ahead of the Sunshine State are Texas, with 174; Utah, with 403; and South Carolina, with 698.

There have been 1,768 cases of measles in the United States in 2026, according to the U.S. Measles Tracker, a dashboard hosted by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.