The Donald Trump administration has made it clear that he will not allow Transgender Women to play in Women’s high school or college sports. That started to be implemented very early on in his second Presidential term.
However, it won’t come without a fight.
Breaking: Donald Trump Faces Major “Fight” In Banning Transgender Women From Sports (Report)
According to Will Graves of The Associated Press:
Donald Trump, the candidate, pledged to get “transgender insanity the hell out of our schools” and “keep men out of women’s sports.”
Donald Trump, the president, wasted little time delivering on his promise to address a topic that seemed to resonate across party lines. Trump issued an executive order on the day his second term began that called for “restoring biological truth to the federal government” and signed another on Wednesday titled “ Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports. “
The federal government now has wide latitude across multiple agencies to penalize federally funded entities that “deprive women and girls of fair athletic opportunities.”
“The war on women’s sports is over,” Trump declared.
Probably not. Legal challenges like the ones against other executive orders aimed at transgender people are likely and on Wednesday, the Trump administration sued Maine for not complying with the government’s push to ban transgender athletes in girls and women’s sports.
The biggest takeaway is that the Trump administration has empowered the federal government to take aggressive steps to go after entities — be they a school or an athletic association and now a state — that do not comply. Federal funding, and potentially grants to educational programs, could be pulled.
The threshold for noncompliance: Any entity that denies “female students an equal opportunity to participate in sports and athletic events by requiring them, in the women’s category, to compete with or against or to appear unclothed before males.”
The Education Department announced less than 24 hours after the order’s signing that it was investigating San Jose State University, the University of Pennsylvania and the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association, all of which have had Title IX violations reported against them for allowing transgender athletes to compete. It also investigated Maine and last week referred the case to the Justice Department.
In spite of the 544,000 athletes competing on 19,000 teams at various levels across the country, the NCAA does not track data on transgender athletes. In December, NCAA President Charlie Baker testified in Congress that fewer than 10 active NCAA athletes identified as transgender.
There are about 300,000 high school students (ages 13-17) who identify as transgender, according to a 2022 report by the Williams Institute. It is unknown what percentage of those young people participate in sports, but it is anticipated to be a small percent.
