Earlier today, United States President Donald Trump signed his executive order “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports” which completely bans any transgender athlete from participating in women’s athletics.
NCAA President Charlie Baker issued a statement this afternoon, confirming that the NCAA will be complying with the standard and they would spend the coming days reviewing their policies to align accordingly.
“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” According to the statement, the NCAA “will continue to help foster welcoming environments on campuses for all student-athletes.” Baker also mentioned that the NCAA is ready to “assist schools as they look for ways to support any student-athlete affected by the change in the policy.”
The order states that the federal government will “rescind all funds from educational programs” that allow transgender athletes to compete in categories with men. According to the order, the definitions of male and female are congruent with those provided in the “Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government” order from President Trump’s first day in office. That definition reads:
“(a) “Sex” shall refer to an individual’s immutable biological classification as either male or female. “Sex” is not a synonym for and does not include the concept of “gender identity.”
(b) “Women” or “woman” and “girls” or “girl” shall mean adult and juvenile human females, respectively.
(c) “Men” or “man” and “boys” or “boy” shall mean adult and juvenile human males, respectively.
(d) “Female” means a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the large reproductive cell.
(e) “Male” means a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the small reproductive cell.”
This a shift from the way transgender participation has been treated in the past, where transgender female athletes just had to meet a particular testosterone requirement in order to be allowed to compete.
In 2022, the NCAA rule was that transgender athletes had to be below 10 nanomoles per liter in order to be eligible, this allowed transgender swimmer Lia Thomas to compete at the 2022 NCAA Championships, where she finished 1st in the 500 freestyle (4:33.24), 5th in the 200 freestyle (1:43.40), and 8th in the 100 free (48.18).
USA Swimming has a different rule, requiring no greater amount of testosterone than 5 nanomoles per liter for a period of at least 36 months in order to be eligible.
With the update from today, the NCAA will no longer be allowing any transgender competitors in women’s categories at all.
You can read the full executive order from today here.
The executive order from January 20th defining the sexes can be read here.
the federal government is doing a lot of work to tell that single-digit number of people to eff themselves.
why! would you! comply in advance!?
Good ole common sense
A lot of really dumb stuff used to be “common sense.”
Then we got less dumb and it wasn’t so common or sensical anymore.