A major adult swimming organization is facing scrutiny from Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier, who on Tuesday called on the nonprofit group to ban transgender athletes from women’s competitions — a policy it already put in place earlier this month.

Speaking to reporters in Orlando alongside Florida Department of Education Commissioner Anastasios Kamoutsas, Uthmeier said the Sarasota-based U.S. Masters Swimming could be running afoul of state law despite a change to its policy.

“This is not acceptable, it does not fly with Florida law,” Uthmeier said. “We will use every tool at our disposal, from our civil rights laws to our anti-discrimination laws to our consumer protection laws, to ensure that we are protecting women and girls.”

A spokesperson for U.S. Masters Swimming, which offers amateur competitions for male and female swimmers over 18 and first adopted a transgender eligibility policy in 2005, did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment.

As of July 1, an “interim” policy prohibited trans women from receiving recognition in the women’s category while still allowing them to participate in sanctioned events, while women athletes with “differences of sexual development” — that is, born with male internal sex organs — can compete “if they can establish to USMS’s comfortable satisfaction that their sex assigned at birth is female.” Trans men, however, can compete in the men’s category without restriction.

The attorney general claimed there were “some loopholes” in the policy that would allow trans women to compete “if you go through some transition process,” but that wasn’t mentioned in the policy found on the U.S. Masters Swimming website.

Uthmeier’s comments come as U.S. Masters Swimming was targeted by the attorney general in Texas after a transgender woman won gold in five races in the women’s age 45-49 category during this year’s Spring Nationals in San Antonio.

Though it once required trans women competitors to document hormone treatments and keep testosterone levels to a certain amount to be eligible, the change to U.S. Masters Swimming’s policy was partly prompted by the Texas investigation, according to its website.

It’s not clear how often trans women have won gold medals or otherwise placed in U.S. Masters Swimming events.

“Sports are the public arena for the difference of the sexes,” said Kim Jones, the co-founder of the nonprofit Independent Council on Women’s Sports, which has filed lawsuits against the NCAA and the Ivy League on the issue. “We all know what a woman is, so when we are confronted with the public spectacle of this absurdity, we all see it.”

Florida and Texas are two of 27 states that have passed laws banning transgender competitors from public school and college athletics in recent years, a front in the culture war kicked off by a law first passed in Idaho in 2020 and advanced by a similar bill signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis in 2021.

Federally, President Donald Trump’s Feb. 5 executive order pulls federal support for schools with athletics programs that allow trans women to compete, while urging major governing bodies to adopt similar policies.

“This is different in that it’s not a school system,” Uthmeier said, “but it’s still hurting women, so we believe we have the legal authority to shut it down.”

Uthmeier, who was appointed attorney general by DeSantis in February to succeed now-U.S. Sen. Ashley Moody, has made national headlines recently as the driving force behind the Everglades immigrant detention facility he first entitled “Alligator Alcatraz.”

He also targeted a gym in Palm Beach Gardens in May after complaints about trans women changing in the women’s locker room. The facility changed its policy shortly after.

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