NCAA bars transgender women from competing in women’s sports

The National Collegiate Athletic Association on Thursday updated its transgender student-athlete policy to prohibit trans women from competing in women’s sports, one day after President Donald Trump signed an executive order stating the federal government would defund schools that allow trans women to do so.

The new policy says students assigned male at birth may practice with women’s teams and receive related benefits such as medical care, but they are not allowed to engage in formal competition. All students, regardless of gender or sex, may compete on men’s teams.

The NCAA previously followed Olympic standards in deferring to sports’ national governing bodies in determining eligibility for trans athletes. The organization adopted that policy in January 2022.

“The NCAA is an organization made up of 1,100 colleges and universities in all 50 states that collectively enroll more than 530,000 student-athletes. We strongly believe that clear, consistent, and uniform eligibility standards would best serve today’s student-athletes instead of a patchwork of conflicting state laws and court decisions. To that end, President Trump’s order provides a clear, national standard,” NCAA President Charlie Baker said in a news release.

Baker told a Senate panel in December that he was aware of fewer than 10 current trans NCAA athletes.

Trump’s latest action builds on his previous executive order declaring that there are only two sexes and demanding federal agencies stop promoting “gender ideology,” which the White House said “replaces the biological category of sex with an ever-shifting concept of self-assessed gender identity.”