Trump signs executive order intended to bar transgender athletes from girls’ and women’s sports
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President Trump signed an executive order on Wednesday designed to ban transgender athletes from participating in women’s or girls’ sporting events.
The order, titled “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports,” gives federal agencies, including the Justice and Education departments, wide latitude to ensure entities that receive federal funding abide by Title IX in alignment with the Trump administration’s view, which interprets “sex” as the gender someone was assigned at birth.
“With this executive order, the war on women’s sports is over,” Trump said at a signing ceremony.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said the order “upholds the promise of Title IX” and will require “immediate action, including enforcement actions, against schools and athletic associations” that deny women single-sex sports and single-sex locker rooms.
The timing of the order coincided with National Girls and Women in Sports Day, and is the latest in a string of executive actions from Trump aimed at transgender people.
President Trump signed executive orders Monday asserting that the U.S. government recognizes only two sexes that are “not changeable,” and reversing Biden administration directives on LGBTQ+ rights.
Trump found during the campaign that his pledge to “keep men out of women’s sports” resonated beyond the usual party lines. He leaned into the rhetoric before the election, pledging to get rid of the “transgender insanity,” though his campaign offered little in the way of details.
The executive order conflicts with laws in California and other blue states that forbid discrimination based on gender identity. The courts are expected to take up the issue.
The order offers some clarity. For example, it authorizes the Education Department to penalize schools that allow transgender athletes to compete, citing noncompliance with Title IX, which prohibits sexual discrimination in schools. Any school found in violation could potentially be ineligible for federal funding.
The order also calls for private sporting bodies to meet at the White House so the president can hear in person “the stories of female athletes who have suffered livelong injuries, who have been silenced and forced to shower with men and compete with men on athletic fields across the country.”
The move is the latest by the Trump administration to limit the rights of the transgender population.
Previous ones have sought to have the federal government reject the idea that people can transition to a gender other than the one assigned at birth. That has implications for areas including passports and prisons. He’s also opened the door to barring transgender service members from the military; called to end federal health insurance and other funding for gender-affirming care for transgender people under age 19 and restrict the way lessons on gender can be taught in schools.
Already, transgender people have sued over several of the policies and are likely to challenge more of them in court.
Civil rights lawyers who are handling the cases have asserted that in some instances, Trump’s orders violate laws adopted by Congress and protections in the Constitution – and that they overstep the authority of the president.
There could be similar questions for this order, for instance: Can the president demand that the NCAA change its policies?
NCAA President Charlie Baker told Republican senators in December that the organization would follow federal law. The NCAA did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.
The order came a day after three former teammates of transgender swimmer Lia Thomas filed a lawsuit accusing the NCAA, Ivy League, Harvard and their own school, Penn, of conspiring to allow Thomas to compete at conference and national championships.
The lawsuit, which makes similar allegations of that filed last year by Kentucky swimmer Riley Gaines and others, alleges the defendants violated Title IX by allowing Thomas to swim. Gaines joined Trump for the signing ceremony.
President Trump issued an executive order Tuesday that aims to stop the use of puberty blockers, hormones and other forms of gender-affirming care for transgender youth.
The Associated Press reported in 2021 that in many cases, states introducing a ban on transgender athletes could not cite instances where their participation was an issue. When Utah state legislators overrode a veto by Gov. Spencer Cox in 2022, the state had only one transgender girl playing in K-12 sports who would be affected by the ban. It did not regulate participation for transgender boys.
“This is a solution looking for a problem,” Cheryl Cooky, a professor at Purdue University who studies the intersection of gender, sports, media and culture, told the AP after Trump was elected.
Yet the actual number of transgender athletes seems to be almost immaterial. Any case of a transgender female athlete competing — or even believed to be competing — draws outsized attention.
Graves writes for the Associated Press.
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