Transgender girls and women are prohibited from playing women’s sports in schools and other educational settings by President Donald Trump’s executive order.
The latest in a line of new executive actions that has put a spotlight on gender debates in the US is the directive, titled “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports.”
After signing the order in the White House’s East Room on Wednesday, Trump declared that “the war on women’s sports is over”.
What does Trump’s order say?
The Department of Justice is given the task of overseeing a ban on transgender athletes from attending female-designated schools or using women’s locker rooms. If schools fail to adhere to the policy, they could lose federal funding.
The directive depends on how to interpret Title IX, a US statute that forbids sex discrimination in education, interprets the definition of “sex” as the gender that a person “was given at birth.”
Defending the policy, a White House official told CNN: “If you’re going to have women’s sports, if you’re going to provide opportunities for women, then they have to be equally safe, equally fair, and equally private opportunities, and so that means that you’re going to preserve women’s sports for women”.
The directive also has an impact on professional sports. It calls on the State Department to press the International Olympic Committee to stop allowing transgender athletes to compete in the US and for government officials to appoint a ban on transgender women from entering the country for competitions.
When the Olympics comes to Los Angeles in 2028, the US will use “all of our authority and our ability” to enforce Trump’s order, a White House official said.
Why has Trump done this?
Throughout the 2024 presidential campaign, Trump has brought up the topic of transgender athletes, promising to address it on his first day in office.
Trump remarked a day before taking the oath of office in Washington that “we will get critical race theory and transgender insanity the hell out of our schools.” “We will keep men out of women’s sports. It’s over”.
In the run-up to the US presidential election last year, the debate over allowing transgender women to compete in women’s sports turned into a slug in the US culture war.
Nearly 70% of Americans who responded to a Gallup survey in May 2023 said trans athletes should only be permitted to compete in their own sex categories. In other words, trans women should compete on men’s teams only. This increased from 62 percent in 2021 to 62 percent.
What does the law say?
It’s complicated. Prior to Trump’s executive order, transgender women had no specific national restrictions on participating in women’s sports, but 27 states already have laws, regulations, or policies governing the participation of transgender students in sports that match their gender identities rather than their biological sex, according to the Movement Advancement Project, an LGBTQ think tank.
However, these laws have frequently been challenged in federal courts, with mixed outcomes. Generally, the courts have ruled that transgender athletes should be allowed to compete, with judgements in their favour in Idaho, West Virgina and Arizona.
The main governing body for college sports in the US, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), applauded the clarity of Trump’s executive order, which “set up a unified national framework” amid “a patchwork of conflicting state laws and court decisions.”
What did Biden do regarding trans women in women’s sports?
Former US President Joe Biden fought fervently for transgender rights from the beginning of his 2021-2025 term, overriding a law that barred transgender people from serving in the military (which Trump has since reinstated).
Then, in 2023, Biden’s administration attempted to amend Title IX to provide some protections to transgender athletes. Schools would be unable to impose blanket bans on transgender athletes under its proposal, which was seen as a middle-ground approach to the contentious issue. However, they would still be able to impose restrictions on their participation if it was determined that it would compromise fair competition or safety.
However, as the former president’s term drew to a close, his administration withdrew the proposal, saying it did not have enough time to “regulate on this issue” due to conflicting feedback and drawn-out court cases.
Do trans women compete in sports more than women?
For years, there have been heated debates surrounding the subject. Even after receiving hormone treatment, transgender women still have a strength and speed advantage over women, according to research. This is because men may not be able to make up for the inherent athletic advantage men have over women after menstrual age, which also includes having more bone density, lung capacity, and muscle mass.
However, a 2024 study from the International Olympic Committee discovered that transgender women may perform worse in jumping, lunging, and general cardiovascular fitness than men.
The benefits of being bigger, according to Joanna Harper, a sports scientist who is transgender, are not as clear as the benefits of being bigger, but they do have drawbacks because their larger frames are now being powered by less muscle mass and less aerobic capacity.
“The question isn’t ‘ Do trans women have advantages? ‘ – but instead, ‘ Can trans women and women compete against one another in meaningful competition? ‘ Truthfully, the answer isn’t definitive yet”, she said.
Which trans women’s sports participation cases have sparked a row?
Although there aren’t many transgender women competing in elite women’s sports, there are still a lot of public debate about these issues. Swimming legend Lia Thomas, who spent three years on the University of Pennsylvania’s men’s swimming team before switching to the women’s team, broke numerous records.
Canadian cyclist Veronica Ivy, who became the first transgender woman to win a world championship in track cycling, is another. Ivy criticised the sport’s governing authority for later imposing a ban on transgender women who transitioned after puberty from participating in women’s events, calling the policy “inhumane” and “disgusting”.
Imane Khelif, an Algerian boxer who did not identify as transgender, was at the center of a gender row during the most recent Olympic games. Khelif, who was recorded as female at birth faced a flurry of online backlash, egged on by Trump and several right-wing French politicians, due to previously failing a “gender eligibility test” by a boxing federation. After being declared fully eligible for the Olympics and earning a gold medal last year, Khalif later sued social media platform X for harassment.
What are the most notable sports organizations’ opinions on this subject?
Last year, the International Olympic Committee made changes to its policies to give individual sports the authority to define participation standards. At least 10 Olympic sports, including swimming, cycling and boxing, introduced restrictions for transgender athletes for the 2024 games.
The US’s NCAA, for its part, has sport-specific testosterone limits for transgender women. The association has now said it will take steps to align its policy with Trump’s new directive, “subject to further guidance from the administration”.
What do women’s sports figures say?
Their views are divided. Some argue that a ban on women’s sports is necessary to ensure equality, while others argue that it unfairly discriminates against a minority group.
Former British Olympian Sharron Davies, a swimmer who campaigns for women’s sports, claimed that “second-rate male athletes are self-identifying their way onto women’s podiums” and ruining grassroots sport in a foreword to a report by Policy Exchange, a UK conservative think tank, in 2024. Davis also wants to see a ban on biological males from both professional and amateur female competitors.
One of the attendees to Trump’s signing ceremony on Wednesday, former college swimmer Riley Gaines, who said she applauded the ban. She wrote on X: “Things could’ve been so different. The final straw, according to many moderates, was gender mania.
Things could’ve been so different. The final blow for many moderates was gender insanity, which fueled the shift toward common sense. Specifically, I believe it was the issue of men in women’s sports.
Since November 5th, I’ve been living in a state of gratitude every day. Praise God. pic. twitter.com/3ByM1n8TUf
Fatima Goss Graves, president and CEO of the National Women’s Law Center, however, spoke out against the ban, saying it only served to alienate transgender women.
“Contrary to what the president wants you to believe, trans students do not pose threats to sports, schools or this country, and they deserve the same opportunities as their peers to learn, play and grow up in safe environments”, she said.
What are the opinions of LGBTQ and other civil rights advocates?
The ban has been largely denounced by them.
The administration of Trump allegedly used the protection of women as a pretext to erode transgender rights, according to GLAAD, an LGBTQ advocacy group.
In any discussion about protecting women and girls, anti-LGBTQ politicians with a history of abusing, bullying, and denying their health care have no credibility, the organization claimed in a statement.
Another pro-LGBTQ organization, Athlete Ally, expressed sadness over the “no longer be able to experience the joy of playing sports as their full and authentic selves.”
Source: Aljazeera
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