May 17 (Reuters) - South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster this week signed a bill banning transgender athletes from playing school sports that match their gender identity, joining a number of Republican-led states that have enacted similar laws this year.

The "Save Women's Sports Act" first cleared the state's House of Representatives last month after the Republican majority outlasted an estimated 1,000 amendments to the bill put forward by Democrats seeking to stall it. It passed the Republican-controlled Senate earlier this month. The measure signed into law by McMaster on Monday bars transgender girls and women from female sports teams in public elementary schools, middle schools, high schools and colleges, as well as private school teams that compete against public schools.

The law was amended in the Senate to prohibit transgender boys and young men from competing on male school sports teams, "unless no team designated for females in that sport is offered at the school in which the student is enrolled."