NCAA Bars Transgender Athletes From Women’s Sports After Trump Order
The NCAA changed its participation policy for transgender athletes on Thursday, limiting competition in women’s sports to athletes who were assigned female at birth.
The move came one day after President Donald Trump signed an executive order intended to ban transgender athletes from girls’ and women’s sports. The order gives federal agencies latitude to withhold federal funding from entities that do not abide by Title IX in alignment with the Trump administration’s view, which interprets “sex” as the gender someone was assigned at birth.
The NCAA policy change is effective immediately and applies to all athletes regardless of previous eligibility reviews. The NCAA has some 1,100 member schools with more than 500,000 athletes, easily the largest governing body for college athletics in the U.S.
The NCAA’s decision was hailed by former Kentucky swimmer Riley Gaines, a vocal advocate of banning transgender athletes from women’s sports. Gaines, who was at the White House signing ceremony with Trump, was among more than a dozen college athletes who filed a lawsuit against the NCAA last year, accusing it of violating their Title IX rights by allowing transgender woman Lia Thomas to compete at the national championships in 2022.
The previous NCAA policy went into effect in 2022 and adopted a sport-by-sport approach, where transgender participation was determined by the policy of the sport’s national governing body. In sports with no national governing body, that sport’s international federation policy would be in place. If there is no international federation policy, previously established IOC policy criteria would take over.
