On National Girls & Women in Sports Day, which was Wednesday, President Trump signed the "Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports" executive order to protect fair competition for female athletes. The order mandates revoking federal funding from educational programs that allow biological men to compete in women’s sports, citing concerns over safety, fairness, and privacy. In response, NCAA President Charlie Baker acknowledged the order as a “clear, national standard” and that the organization would review its policies.
On Thursday afternoon, the NCAA announced that women’s sports are now officially restricted to biological females.
“Today, the NCAA announced the Board of Governors voted to update the Association's participation policy for transgender student-athletes following the Trump administration's executive order,” the organization said in a statement. “The new policy limits competition in women's sports to student-athletes assigned female at birth only.”
It would be nice if it said “biologically female” instead of that ridiculous “assigned female at birth” nonsense, but I’ll take it as a win anyway.
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The statement also notes that the updated policy “permits student-athletes assigned male at birth to practice with women's teams and receive benefits such as medical care while practicing.”
This policy takes effect immediately and applies to all student-athletes, regardless of any prior eligibility determinations under the NCAA’s previous transgender-friendly participation rules.
"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,” Baker said. “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."
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“The updated policy combined with these resources follows through on the NCAA's constitutional commitment to deliver intercollegiate athletics competition and to protect, support, and enhance the mental and physical health of student-athletes," Baker said. "This national standard brings much needed clarity as we modernize college sports for today's student-athletes."
The only downside to this change is that the policy allows for female students who identify as transgender to participate in NCAA men’s sports “assuming they meet all other NCAA eligibility requirements.” This may be in recognition that females taking testosterone will have an unfair advantage over females who aren’t. Or it could be that this policy is designed to encourage lawsuits by making the policy appear discriminatory because it doesn’t force all students to compete on teams aligning with their biological sex.
I don’t know the answer to that yet; we’ll just have to wait and see. But nevertheless, this is a huge victory for female athletes!
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