What’s behind Trump’s ban on transgender women in US women’s sports? | Explainer…

United States President Donald Trump has issued an executive order that bans transgender girls and women from participating in women’s sports in schools and other educational settings.

The directive, titled “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports”, is the latest addition to a series of new executive actions that have shone a focus on gender debates within the US.

After signing the order in the White House’s East Room on Wednesday, Trump declared that “the war on women’s sports is over”.

What does Trump’s order say?

The order instructs the Department of Justice to oversee a ban on transgender girls or women from participating in female-designated school athletics or using women’s locker rooms. If schools fail to adhere to the policy, they could lose federal funding.

The directive hinges on a specific interpretation of Title IX, the US law that forbids sex discrimination in education, which now defines “sex” as the gender someone “was assigned at birth”.

Defending the policy, a White House official told CNN: “If you’re going to have women’s sports, if you’re going to provide opportunities for women, then they have to be equally safe, equally fair, and equally private opportunities, and so that means that you’re going to preserve women’s sports for women.”

The directive also has implications for professional sports. It urges government officials to block transgender women from entering the US for competitions and for the State Department to push the International Olympic Committee to stop allowing trans athletes to take part in its games.

When the Olympics comes to Los Angeles in 2028, the US will use “all of our authority and our ability” to enforce Trump’s order, a White House official said.

Why has Trump done this?

Trump repeatedly brought up the issue of transgender athletes throughout the 2024 presidential campaign, pledging to tackle it on his first day in office.

“We will get critical race theory and transgender insanity the hell out of our schools,” Trump said a day before being sworn in in Washington. “We will keep men out of women’s sports. It’s over.”

The debate over allowing transgender women to compete in women’s sports – which polls indicate most Americans oppose – became a lightning rod in the US culture war in the lead-up to the US presidential election last year.

According to a May 2023 Gallup survey of adults in the US, nearly 70 percent of respondents said trans athletes should only be allowed to compete in their own sex categories. In other words, trans women should compete on men’s teams only. This was a rise from 62 percent in 2021.

What does the law say?

It’s complicated. While there was no specific national ban on transgender women in women’s sports prior to Trump’s executive order, 27 states already have laws, regulations or policies restricting transgender students from participating in sports categories matching their gender identities rather than their biological sex, according to the Movement Advancement Project, an LGBTQ think tank.

However, these laws have frequently been challenged in federal courts, with mixed outcomes. Generally, the courts have ruled that transgender athletes should be allowed to compete, with judgements in their favour in Idaho, West Virgina and Arizona.

The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), the US’s main governing body for college sports, welcomed the clarity provided by Trump’s executive order, saying it set a unified national framework amid “a patchwork of conflicting state laws and court decisions”.

What did Biden do regarding trans women in women’s sports?

From early on in his 2021-2025 term, former US President Joe Biden was a strong advocate of transgender rights, reversing an order from the 2017-2021 Trump era that had barred transgender people from the military (which Trump has since reinstated).

Then in 2023, Biden’s administration set out to amend Title IX to provide some protections for transgender athletes. Under its proposal, which was viewed as a middle-ground approach to the contentious issue, schools would be prohibited from imposing blanket bans on transgender athletes, but would still have the ability to limit their participation if it could be proven to jeopardise fair competition or safety.

However, as the former president’s term drew to a close, his administration withdrew the proposal, saying it did not have enough time to “regulate on this issue” due to conflicting feedback and drawn-out court cases.

Do trans women have an advantage over women in sports?

The issue has been hotly debated for years. Studies have shown that transgender women, even after hormone treatment, still have an advantage in strength and speed over women. This is because suppressing testosterone alone may not be enough to compensate for the natural athletic advantage men have over women after undergoing male puberty, which also generally results in higher bone density, larger lung capacity and greater muscle mass.

However, a 2024 study commissioned by the International Olympic Committee found that transgender women may have lower performance in jumping, lung capacity and general cardiovascular fitness than other men.

“Trans women can have disadvantages because their larger frames are now being powered by reduced muscle mass and reduced aerobic capacity, but that’s not as obvious as the advantages of simply being bigger,” Joanna Harper, a sports scientist who is transgender, told the BBC.

“The question isn’t ‘Do trans women have advantages?’ – but instead, ‘Can trans women and women compete against one another in meaningful competition?’ Truthfully, the answer isn’t definitive yet,” she said.

Which cases of trans women participating in women’s sports have caused a row?

Although relatively few transgender women have competed in women’s sports at elite levels, several high-profile cases have sparked public debate in recent years. One of the most notable was that of swimmer Lia Thomas, who spent three years on the University of Pennsylvania’s men’s swimming team before transitioning and joining the women’s team, and going on to shatter multiple records.

Another is Canadian cyclist Veronica Ivy, who in 2018 became the first transgender woman to win a world track cycling championship. Ivy criticised the sport’s governing authority for later imposing a ban on transgender women who transitioned after puberty from participating in women’s events, calling the policy “inhumane” and “disgusting”.

Though not self-identifying as transgender, Algerian boxer Imane Khelif was at the centre of a gender row during the last Olympic games. Khelif, who was recorded as female at birth faced a flurry of online backlash, egged on by Trump and several right-wing French politicians, due to previously failing a “gender eligibility test” by a boxing federation. Khelif, who was deemed fully eligible for the Olympics and won a gold medal last year, later filed a lawsuit against social media platform X for harassment.

What do major sports bodies say about this issue?

The International Olympic Committee revised its policies last year to give individual sports the authority to set participation criteria. At least 10 Olympic sports, including swimming, cycling and boxing, introduced restrictions for transgender athletes for the 2024 games.

The US’s NCAA, for its part, has sport-specific testosterone limits for transgender women. The association has now said it will take steps to align its policy with Trump’s new directive, “subject to further guidance from the administration”.

What do women’s sports figures say?

Their views are divided. Some argue such a ban is necessary to maintain fairness in women’s sports, while others contend it unjustly discriminates against a minority community.

Former British Olympian Sharron Davies, a swimmer who campaigns for women’s sports, claimed that “second-rate male athletes are self-identifying their way onto women’s podiums” and ruining grassroots sport in a foreword to a report by Policy Exchange, a UK conservative think tank, in 2024. Davies is also calling for the United Kingdom’s government to ban biological males from female amateur competitions as well as professional ones.

Riley Gaines, a former college swimmer who is now an advocate for women’s sports, was one of those who attended Trump’s signing ceremony on Wednesday and said she welcomes the ban. She wrote on X: “Things could’ve been so different. Gender insanity was the final straw that brought a lot of moderates to the side of common sense.”

Things could’ve been so different. Gender insanity was the final straw that brought a lot of moderates to the side of common sense. Specifically, I believe it was the issue of men in women’s sports.

I’ve been living in a state of gratitude everyday since Nov 5th. Praise God. pic.twitter.com/3ByM1n8TUf

— Riley Gaines (@Riley_Gaines_) February 5, 2025

Fatima Goss Graves, president and CEO of the National Women’s Law Center, however, spoke out against the ban, saying it only served to alienate transgender women.

“Contrary to what the president wants you to believe, trans students do not pose threats to sports, schools or this country, and they deserve the same opportunities as their peers to learn, play and grow up in safe environments,” she said.

What do LGBTQ and other rights activists say?

They have largely condemned the ban.

GLAAD, an LGBTQ advocacy group, accused Trump’s administration of disingenuously using the protection of women as an excuse to erode transgender rights.

“Anti-LGBTQ politicians with a record of abusing and silencing women and stripping their health care have zero credibility in any conversation about protecting women and girls,” the group said in a statement.

Athlete Ally, another pro-LGBTQ organisation, said it was saddened that trans youth would “no longer be able to know the joy of playing sports as their full and authentic selves”.

“We’ve known this day was likely to occur for a long time, as this administration continues to pursue simple solutions to complex issues, often resulting in animus towards the most marginalised communities in our country,” the group said in a statement.