By Lil Kalish
President Donald Trump on Wednesday signed an executive order aimed at barring trans women and girls from women’s sports. The order would require federally-funded K-12 schools and colleges to bar trans women and girls from participating in women’s sports.
Trump signed the order on the 39th annual National Girls and Women in Sports Day and shared a strong message to public education institutions. He cautioned that those who “let men take over women’s sports teams or invade your locker rooms” will be investigated for Title IX violations and risk losing their federal funding.
The order, though not legally binding, sends a chilling message to federally-funded schools, just days after Trump signed one another threatening to withhold federal funding from schools with trans-inclusive policies and another declaring the government will recognize only two narrowly-defined sexes and that “these sexes are not changeable.”
White House officials told reporters Wednesday morning that the administration will roll back Biden-era guidance on Title IX ― the civil rights law that prohibits sex-based discrimination in education ― which required schools to allow trans students to participate in sports and use locker rooms that align with their gender identity.
Trump’s action today delivers on both his campaign promise to ban “boys in girls’ sports” and the yearslong fight by the religious right to bar trans women and girls from participating in sports.
Since 2020, when Idaho Republicans introduced the first ban on trans athletes with their so-called “Fairness in Women’s Sports Act,” 25 states have passed laws specifically restricting transgender girls and women from participating in women’s sports, according to the Movement Advancement Project.
These state-level bills, targeting both students in K-12 education and college athletes, opened the door to restrictive policy changes across competitive international and national athletic agencies. The World Athletics, World Aquatics, and the International Cycling Union have all enacted policies to bar trans women from women’s competitions if they have not medically transitioned before puberty. The International Surfing Association only allows trans women to compete if they can demonstrate continuously lowered testosterone levels.
These policies target the very few trans athletes competing at the collegiate and elite level. Last year, the National Collegiate Athletics Association President Charlie Baker told a Senate panel that he knew of fewer than 10 transgender athletes competing in college sports. The NCAA announced in 2022 that transgender athletes’ participation in each sport would depend on guidelines set by the sport’s governing body.
The organization faces mounting pressure from right-wing advocates to categorically ban trans athletes. Former college swimmer turned anti-trans sport advocate Riley Gaines sued the organization, claiming its policy on trans athletes violated Title IX after she tied for fifth place with Lia Thomas, a trans woman in a 2022 NCAA swimming and diving championship.
Gaines also appeared on Wednesday on stage with Trump, who was flanked by dozens of other female athletes.
On the international stage, even fewer trans athletes have been able to qualify for competitions. In last year’s Olympic Games in Paris, only two nonbinary athletes ― distance runner Nikki Hiltz and mononymous soccer player Quinn ― competed in women’s categories.
The International Olympic Committee issued a new framework in January 2024, clarifying that the organization should not subject athletes to “gynaecological examinations or similar forms of physical examinations, aimed at determining an athlete’s sex.”
The IOC made headlines this summer when Algerian boxer Imane Khelif, a cisgender woman, beat Italian boxer Angela Carini 46 seconds into their welterweight match. Anti-trans critics were quick to make transphobic and racist remarks about Khelif even though she is not trans. The International Boxing Association — an organization that was suspended by the IOC for its lack of financial transparency and its ties to a Russian-owned energy company — claimed that it had disqualified Khelif and another athlete for “competitive advantages” over other female competitors after conducting sex testing.
LGBTQ advocates have warned that this order will put a target on transgender youth.
“This order could expose young people to harassment and discrimination, emboldening people to question the gender of kids who don’t fit a narrow view of how they’re supposed to dress or look,” Human Rights Campaign President Kelley Robinson said in a statement.
This is already happening in states like Utah, which passed restrictions on trans athletes’ participation in school sports in 2022. That year, a cisgender girl who won a high school swim competition was investigated after parents of another swimmer filed complaints questioning her gender. Last year, a Utah school board member falsely implied that a cisgender girl on a basketball team was trans.
Ahead of the November election, Trump and his close ally, Elon Musk, repeatedly ridiculed Khelif. A Trump campaign ad called “We Fight” features a short clip of Khelif, while a voiceover claims that America took a “wrong turn” when “men could beat up women and win medals.” The Washington Post found that this line can be traced to Russian misinformation.
Claims about trans women’s so-called “biological advantage” in sports have not been backed up by any scientific evidence. Research from the British Journal of Sports Medicine found that trans women who have completed more than one year of hormone therapy performed at worse levels compared to cis women when it comes to strength and lung functioning. A 2021 report from the Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport also found that trans women have “no clear biological advantages.”
Sex testing in sports originated in Nazi Germany. The Nazis introduced the practice with nude exams and, later, hormonal testing to make determinations about who was, and who was not, considered a woman ahead of the 1936 Olympics. Today these practices disproportionately harm women of color from the Global South, according to a 2020 report from Human Rights Watch.
Despite this evidence, conservative organizations have made discussions around “fairness” in sports their rallying cry — and have used this wedge issue as a way to drum up support for further anti-trans legislation. Since 2019, The Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative Christian legal group, has initiated a deluge of lawsuits opposing the trans athletes participation in girls’ sports, and has helped draft model legislation for state lawmakers to bar athletes and further restrict trans students’ rights in schools.
Similarly, the Independent Women’s Voice, a conservative women’s policy organization, has sent Gaines, its ambassador, to urge Congress to pass policies that bar trans women and girls from sports. Leonard Leo, the right-wing billionaire and legal activist who helped build the Supreme Court’s conservative majority, gave millions to the organization through one of his nonprofit organizations.
This order is now the eighth action signed by Trump aimed at rescinding or restricting trans rights. Within his first two weeks in office, Trump has signed orders that ban transgender people from serving in the military and bar trans people under 19 from receiving transition-related care.
