Former Miss North Florida Kayleigh Bush says she was stripped of her crown by the Miss America Organization after she refused to sign a contract agreeing that "little boys can become girls."
"I was asked to sign a contract that was different than the first one I had agreed to because they had changed it four weeks after," she told TMZ on Wednesday.
"I didn't lose my crown because I broke a rule, I lost the crown because I was unwilling to rewrite the truth.
"It was heartbreaking, it was confusing, it was disappointing because Miss America has honored women for 100 years and now, they can't even define what a woman is," she added.
As of the 2025 season, the Miss America Organization requires that transgender contestants have "completed" gender-transition surgery.
Bush said the contract changed after she won the North Florida title in September 2024.
The religious advocacy group Liberty Counsel supported Bush's appeal, which the Miss Florida Scholarship Program and Miss America Organization declined to accept.
"Immediately as soon as we were given the contract, my mom and I started raising concerns about it. I couldn't agree that a little boy could mutilate his body and become a woman," she told TMZ.
"I used to look up to America because they empowered women. But now it's really disappointing to see that they have abandoned a commonsense truth that a man is a man, and a woman is a woman. I'm disappointed in the Miss America organization," she added.
The Miss America Organization in a statement said its position "is grounded in uniform application of its rules, fairness to all contestants, and adherence to nondiscrimination principles.
"The contract does not compel Ms. Bush to compromise her personal beliefs; it requires only that all contestants compete under the same standards and refrain from discriminatory conduct towards others," it added.
Solange Reyner ✉
Solange Reyner is a writer and editor for Newsmax. She has more than 15 years in the journalism industry reporting and covering news, sports and politics.
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