US President, Donald Trump has signed an executive order banning transgender women from participating in women’s sports.
“The war on women’s sports is over,” he said on Wednesday, February 5, “With my action this afternoon, we are putting every school receiving taxpayer dollars on notice that if you let men take over women’s sports teams or invade your locker rooms, you will be investigated for violations of Title IX and risk your federal funding.”
The executive order, signed on National Girls and Women in Sports Day, declares that it’s “the policy of the United States to oppose male competitive participation in women’s sports more broadly, as a matter of safety, fairness, dignity, and truth.” Under the order, the assistant to the president for domestic policy will bring together representatives of “major athletic organizations and governing bodies, and female athletes harmed by such policies, to promote policies that are fair and safe, in the best interests of female athletes.”
The president’s latest action builds on the GOP’s broader campaign to remove all recognition of transgender individuals from state and federal programs.
On his first day in office, Trump signed a separate executive action declaring that there are only two sexes and banning federal funding for any program related to “gender ideology.”
And House Republicans have passed a bill that would unilaterally ban trans women from competing in women’s sports.
In nearly half of the country, trans women are banned from playing women’s sports at the K-12 or higher education level, but the order would take those bans nationwide.
Additionally, the order calls on the education secretary to prioritize “Title IX enforcement actions against educational institutions (including athletic associations composed of or governed by such institutions) that deny 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.” (Federally funded K-12 public schools and colleges are required to comply with Title IX, which bars discrimination based on sex in educational settings.)
“My administration will not stand by and watch men beat and batter women,” he said. “It’s going to end and nobody’s gonna be able to do a damn thing about it because when I speak [I] speak with authority.” (Trump was referring to an Olympic gold medal–winning Algerian boxer whom some accused of being transgender; the boxer has publicly said she was born a woman.)
Fatima Goss Graves, president of the National Women’s Law Center, said in a statement that trans students do not pose a threat in sports and deserve the same opportunities as their peers.
“The far-right’s disturbing obsession with controlling the bodies, hearts, and minds of our country’s youth harms all students,” Graves said.
