The NCAA has barred transgender athletes from competing in women’s college sports, in a sweeping new policy that could apply to fewer than 10 athletes across the country.
In a statement Thursday, the sports organization said that effective immediately, only athletes assigned female at birth will be allowed to compete in women’s sports. Trans athletes can still practice with women’s teams and have access to medical care and other benefits, the NCAA said. The policy, enacted to comply with an executive order President Donald Trump signed a day earlier, does not apply to trans men.
The NCAA previously deferred policies on trans athletes to each sport’s national governing body.
More than 500,000 student-athletes play NCAA sports. Of that number, fewer than 10 of them are trans, NCAA President Charlie Baker told a Senate panel in December. He did not say if those athletes are trans women or trans men.
Since taking office two weeks ago, Trump has signed four executive orders targeting trans people. His latest order, “No Men in Women’s Sports,” prohibits trans women from competing in women’s sports in the U.S. and fulfills one of his 2024 campaign promises. While signing the bill, he denigrated trans women and misgendered Imane Khelif, an Olympic gold medalist boxer from Algeria who is a cisgender woman.
Proponents of such bans argue that trans women have biological traits that give them an unfair advantage over cis women, despite the lack of research on the subject. Data does show, however, that trans people face intense discrimination across nearly all sectors of life in the U.S., including in sports.
Opponents of such sporting bans have similarly pointed out that considering the relatively minuscule number of trans girls and women athletes, the outrage over their participation is disproportionate, and that claims that they may “dominate” a sport are meant to obscure the broader effort to expel trans people from public life.
