Goodbye, Lia Thomas? New NCAA Trans Student-Athlete Policy Is ‘Effective Immediately’

It’s over. More than a decade after establishing a landmark policy of equality in sports as a human right, the National Collegiate Athletic Association caved under pressure to tear it all up.

Just before 9 p.m. CST Wednesday, the Board of Governors of the NCAA quietly announced the end to its 11-year-old policy on transgender participation in college sports, something that has been challenged, debated and derided in recent weeks.

The impetus for all the talk, as Mark Edelman reported earlier this month, is the unparalleled but controversial success of an out trans woman swimming for the University of Pennsylvania, Lia Thomas.

What the NCAA put in place in 2011, “to ensure transgender student-athletes fair, respectful, and legal access to collegiate sports teams based on current medical and legal knowledge,” is gone, effective immediately.

In its place is a new policy, supposedly aligned with recent changes by the International Olympic Committee, which the NCAA claims is “a sport-by-sport approach to transgender participation that preserves opportunity for transgender student-athletes while balancing fairness, inclusion and safety for all who compete.” This announcement was not accompanied by any reference to new medical or legal evidence justifying the change.

The bottom line: Depending on how it evolves, this new policy is either exactly what opponents of trans inclusion in school sports have been clamoring for, or potentially, it could be their worst nightmare.

Passing the Buck

Following the updated policy announcement, the College Swimming and Diving Coaches Association of America sharply criticized the NCAA for what it called its “failure to take the lead in this important discussion.”

To some, what the NCAA has done is “passed the buck.” Or maybe it’s a game of hot potato?

If so, that potato has been cooking for quite some time:

• It’s been almost a year since 545 athletes demanded the NCAA take action to protect trans athletes from states banning them from competing.
• Nine months ago, the NCAA issued a wishy-washy, flip-flopping statement on whether Republican-led states banning trans athletes might lose lucrative state championship tournaments; None did.
• In May, 50 trans and nonbinary current and former college athletes joined forces with Athlete Ally to send the NCAA a letter, protesting its scheduling of college softball events in states banning trans athletes, pressuring it to take action to keep trans athletes safe. Nothing happened.
• When Sports Illustrated’s Julie Kliegman did a deep dive last summer into inaction by the NCAA, six states were enacting anti-trans laws. Now, as ESPN’s Katie Barnes reported, there are ten, with more in the works.
• Then on Wednesday, following an outcry from coaches, athletes, activists and parents of cisgender girls and women, claiming it’s unfair that the policy that allowed Thomas to not only compete with other women also enabled her to set new records, the NCAA governors responded with this update to its policy. It was announced during their annual convention, which meets again Thursday for a vote on a new constitution.

Many questions abound regarding the policy, however, and they may take precedence before that vote because of how the press release posted late Wednesday night is phrased. It’s unclear whether the NCAA’s “updated transgender participation policy” will mean the end of Lia Thomas’s ability to compete on the Penn Quakers women’s team, as well as the end of eligibility for every other out trans student-athlete, male, female and nonbinary.

Here’s why:

“Like the Olympics, the updated NCAA policy calls for transgender participation for each sport to be determined by the policy for the national governing body of that sport, subject to ongoing review and recommendation by the NCAA Committee on Competitive Safeguards and Medical Aspects of Sports to the Board of Governors,” said the NCAA in its Wednesday night post. “If there is no NGB [national governing body] policy for a sport, that sport’s international federation policy would be followed. If there is no international federation policy, previously established IOC policy criteria would be followed.”

As swimswam.com reported, “A spokesperson from the NCAA has clarified that the ‘previously established IOC policy criteria’ refers to the November 2021 framework, which doesn’t have specific rules about testosterone impression.” None.

Abandoning Testosterone

In fact, the IOC framework, set to take effect in March, devoted a lot of words to explaining why it was abandoning testosterone as a means of determining the eligibility of trans women athletes. In its announcement last fall, the Olympic committee declared:

• There is “no scientific consensus on how testosterone affects performance across all sports.”
• “There is an unclear role of testosterone alone in predicting performance across all sports.”
• “Athletes should not be pressured to undergo medically unnecessary procedures or treatment,” such as testosterone suppression.

And as swimswam.com noted, “at present, for swimming, this means that there is now no testosterone suppression requirement, as neither FINA nor USA Swimming have published one.” The requirement that’s posted right now on usaswimming.org is outdated, citing “current IOC guidelines” that were abandoned in November.

So, this policy change by the NCAA could conceivably open the floodgates to trans women who are not medically suppressing their testosterone levels, enabling them to swim competitively for their college or university without any restriction.

More likely, however, is that “current transgender athletes, like Thomas, could be impacted as early as this season—if USA Swimming and/or FINA come up with a policy,” according to swimswam.com. There’s no telling right now what that impact will look like. FINA, incidentally, is the international federation recognized by the IOC for administering international competitions in water sports.

“This update complicates the NCAA policy in a way that I don’t believe they are equipped to handle,” duathlete and transgender inclusion advocate Chris Mosier told ESPN’s Katie Barnes. “Given that many NGBs have not created policies for transgender athletes and that policies vary from sport NGB to NGB, tracking compliance is going to be a nightmare for the NCAA. This creates many different standards for trans athletes.”

Former Olympic swimmer Nancy Hogshead-Makar, one of the co-founders of the Women’s Sports Policy Working Group, an organization led by cisgender women athletes that wants to create separate categories of competition for some trans women athletes, reportedly isn’t satisfied with the updated policy either.

“The new NCAA policy sounds a lot like the old one,” she told Barnes of ESPN. “The board hasn’t resolved the intractable balancing between fairness, playing safety and inclusion. They failed women by not prioritizing fairness.”

What Hogshead-Makar did not say: Trans women are women.

“Flexibility to Allow for Additional Eligibility”

In announcing its new policy, the governors called for ”flexibility,” so that if a transgender student-athlete loses eligibility because of the policy change, the rules may be reconsidered, provided they meet “newly adopted standards.”

Those new standards allowing for “additional eligibility,” whatever that means, will surely determine who competes in the NCAA 2022 Winter Championships beginning in March.

At that event, Thomas and trans man Iszac Henig of Yale University are expected to swim for their respective women’s teams. Henig has stated publicly he postponed testosterone treatment so that he could compete on the women’s team, according to the now-rescinded NCAA rules. Under the new rules, could he now start on T and still compete with the women Bulldogs? It’s unclear; USA Swimming’s old, IOC-based policy on testosterone said “trans male athletes, athletes assigned female at birth, are able to compete without restriction.”

According to the NCAA: “Transgender student-athletes will need to document sport-specific testosterone levels beginning four weeks before their sport’s championship selections. Starting with the 2022-23 academic year, transgender student-athletes will need documented levels at the beginning of their season and a second documentation six months after the first. They will also need documented testosterone levels four weeks before championship selections. Full implementation would begin with the 2023-24 academic year.”

Once a new USA Swimming policy is announced, and that’s if it’s announced prior to the March championships, and if Thomas is declared eligible, will she still be held to the old IOC standard? That, too, is unclear. That now-abandoned policy said “trans female athletes must demonstrate a total testosterone level in serum below 10 nmol/L for at least 12 consecutive months prior to competition and must remain below this threshold throughout the period of desired eligibility to compete in the female category in any event.”

Out of Alignment

More importantly, despite the NCAA’s statement that its updated participation policy aligns with changes at the IOC, its “newly adopted standards” are actually out of alignment with the IOC’s abandonment of testosterone as a determinant of eligibility. That discrepancy wasn’t explained by the NCAA Wednesday night, in a statement accompanying the announcement.

“We are steadfast in our support of transgender student-athletes and the fostering of fairness across college sports,” said John DeGioia, chair of the board and Georgetown president. “It is important that NCAA member schools, conferences and college athletes compete in an inclusive, fair, safe and respectful environment and can move forward with a clear understanding of the new policy.”

Every competitive swimmer knows, you don’t jump from the starting block into the pool if you’re not clear. So, although the NCAA is blowing the whistle for everyone to “move forward,” trans student-athletes, their allies and advocates—on both sides of the debate over inclusion—await a better understanding of this new interpretation of “fairness.”