A New York county’s law banning transgender women from playing on female sports teams at county-run parks and recreational facilities has been halted for now.
A state appeals court on Wednesday barred Nassau County from enforcing the ban while a legal challenge brought on behalf of a local women’s roller derby league plays out.
The decision comes after a lower court judge upheld the local law Monday, and the New York Civil Liberties Union, which had sued on the roller derby league’s behalf, vowed to challenge the ruling.
Judge R. Bruce Cozzens had ruled the county ban was “narrowly tailored” and “does not categorically exclude transgender individuals from athletic participation” as they can still play in coed sports leagues.
But the state appellate division, in its decision, said that making the women’s roller derby league become coed would “change the identity of the league,” jeopardizing not just its status with the sport’s governing body but also its ability to grow its membership and find teams to compete against.
Amanda “Curly Fry” Urena, president of the Long Island Roller Rebels, said players were “thrilled” the higher court saw through Nassau County’s “transphobic and cruel ban.”
Gabriella Larios, an attorney with the NYCLU, said the ruling “made it crystal clear that any attempt to ban trans women and girls from sports is prohibited by our state’s anti-discrimination laws.”
Gabriella Larios, staff attorney for the New York Civil Liberties Union, at United Skates of America.Jeenah Moon / AP file
Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman had proposed the ban as a way to protect girls and women from getting injured while competing against transgender women. It would have affected more than 100 sports facilities in the county on Long Island next to New York City.
The Republican, in an emailed statement, said the county will “continue to protect the integrity and safety of women’s sports.” A spokesperson didn’t immediately respond to follow-up questions about whether it would comply with the judge’s order.
Blakeman first imposed the ban through an executive order, but it was struck down after a lawsuit from the roller derby league and the NYCLU. The county’s Republican-controlled Legislature then passed a law containing the ban, setting off another round of litigation.
Sadie Schreiner, a runner on Rochester Institute of Technology’s track and field team during the 2023-2024 season, said she was turned away from the women’s 200-meter and 400-meter races at SUNY Geneseo’s Early Invitational in March. That was despite Schreiner having qualifying times to make her eligible to race.
“As stated in the complaint, the track meet at issue was open to members of the public. SUNY Geneseo violated New York state law when it excluded Sadie because she is a transgender woman,” said Schreiner’s lawyer, Susie Cirilli, according to Geneseo’s NBC affiliate.
Schreiner signed up to compete in the invitational as an independent athlete, not as a representative of her school. Because of that, her lawsuit claims, she should have avoided problems with a new NCAA rule instituted in February that bars transgender women from competing in girls or women’s sporting events.
The NCAA instituted the rule after President Donald Trump signed an executive order withholding federal funding from academic institutions that allow trans women to compete with cisgender women.
NCAA President Charlie Baker said in February it was important to have consistent rules at sanctioned tournaments.
“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,” Baker said in a statement at the time.
But Schreiner’s suit alleges the restrictions put NCAA tournaments in New York out of compliance with state law. Citing the New York State Human Rights Law, the complaint argues state statutes take precedence over NCAA rules.
Of note, a Nassau County judge declined earlier this year to throw out a local ordinance that prohibited transgender participation in women’s sports, despite a legal challenge asserting that the ban went against New York’s human rights protections.
In 2024, Schreiner won the women’s 200-meter and 400-meter races at the invitational.
Earlier this year, 16-year-old AB Hernandez became the target of nationwide hate and harassment when the president of a local school board publicly doxxed the track and field athlete and outed her as transgender. Right-wing activists misgendered her and called her mom “evil;” swarms of adults showed up to heckle her at games; Charlie Kirk pushed state governor Gavin Newsom to condemn her; and President Donald Trump threatened to withhold federal funding from California over her participation.
While transgender athletes are very rare, this type of harassment towards them is playing out across the country and internationally. A trans girl was harassedat a soccer game in Bow, New Hampshire, by adult protestors wearing XX/XY armbands, representing an anti-trans sports clothing brand. And in British Columbia, a 9-year-old cis girl was accosted by a grown man who accused her of being trans and demanded that she prove her sex to him.
While research into the relative athletic capabilities of trans and cis women is ongoing, far-right groups, including the Alliance Defending Freedom and the Leadership Institute, have been putting hate before science to turn the public against trans athletes since at least 2014. And it’s working.
Laws, rules or regulations currently ban trans athletes from competing in sports consistent with their gender identity in 29 states, with 21 beginning the ban in kindergarten. The majority-conservative Supreme Court announcedthis month that it’ll be taking on the question of the constitutionality of the bans. Meanwhile, the federal government is pressuringstates without bans to change their policies in compliance with a Trump executive order that attempts to institute a nationwide ban.
Trump signs an executive order calling for bans on trans women and girls from women’s sports. Photo by: The White House.
These bans have been successful in part because of a toxic and ruthless ecosystem of far-right influencers, like Riley Gaines, who have formed entire careers around attacking trans athletes by prioritizing hate and misinformation.
“So much of what we see … just seems like it’s wrapped up in really hateful and negative messages that aren’t good for anyone,” says Mary Fry, a professor of sport and exercise psychology at the University of Kansas. “We’re creating issues where maybe we don’t need to.”
Harassment and Mental Health
Grace McKenzie has been deeply affected by these hate campaigns. A lifelong athlete, McKenzie has stayed healthy by playing multiple sports where she’s met “amazing people.” Shortly after she transitioned in 2018, she was thrilled when she was invited to join a women’s rugby team at the afterparty of a Lesbians Who Tech conference.
Grace McKenzie. Photo courtesy of McKenzie.
“Rugby became my home, it was my first queer community, it was the space where I really discovered my own womanhood,” McKenzie told Uncloseted Media. “I could be the sometimes-masculine, soft-feminine person who play[s] rugby and loves sports.”
But that started to change in 2019, when McKenzie and others on her team started to hear rumors that World Rugby was considering a ban on trans athletes. Fearing the loss of her community, she started a petition that racked up 25,000 signatures—but it wasn’t enough, and the ban took effect in 2020.
As anti-trans rhetoric in sports has ramped up, McKenzie says she’s had soul-crushing breakdowns that have left her “sobbing uncontrollably and unconsolably.”
“It would be these waves of such intense despair and rage—it was like going through grief for five years,” she says. “I have to wake up every single day and read about another state or another group of people who say that they don’t want me to exist.”
While McKenzie says she’s found the strength to keep playing where she can, sports psychologist Erin Ayala has seen clients leave sports altogether due to the hate toward trans athletes.
“It can be really difficult when they feel like they’re doing everything right … and they still don’t belong,” says Ayala, the founder of the Minnesota-based Skadi Sport Psychology, a therapy clinic for competitive athletes. “Depression can be really high. They don’t have the strength to keep fighting to show up. And then that can further damage their mental health because they’re not getting the exercise and that sense of social support and community.”
That was the story of Andraya Yearwood, who made national headlines in high school when she and another trans girl placed first and second in Connecticut’s high school track competitions. The vitriol directed at her was intense: Parents circulated petitions to have her banned; crowds cheered for her disqualification; the anti-LGBTQ hate group Alliance Defending Freedom launched a lawsuit against the state for letting her play; and she faced a torrent of transphobic and racist harassment.
“It’s a very shitty experience,” Yearwood, now 23, told Uncloseted Media.
Fearing more harassment, she quit running in college.
“I understood that collegiate athletics is on a much larger and much more visible scale. … I just didn’t want to go through all that again for the next four years,” she says. “Track obviously meant a lot to me, and to have to let that go was difficult.”
It’s understandable that Yearwood and other trans athletes struggle when they have to ditch their favorite sport. A litany of research demonstrates that playing sports fosters camaraderie and teamwork and improves mental and physical health. Since trans people disproportionately struggle from poor mental health, social isolation and suicidality, these benefits can be especially crucial.
“In some of these cases, kids have been participating with a peer group for years, and then rules were made and all of a sudden they’re pulled away,” says Fry. “It’s a hard world to be a trans individual in, so it’d be easy to feel lonely and separated.”
Caught in the Crossfire
The anti-trans attacks in sports are also affecting cis women. Ayala, a competitive cyclist, remembers one race where she and her trans friend both made the podium. When photos of the event were posted on Facebook, people accused her of being trans, and she was added to a “list of males who have competed in female sports” maintained by Save Women’s Sports.
Ayala isn’t alone. Numerous cis female athletes have been “transvestigated,” or accused of being trans, including Serena Williams and Brittney Griner. During the 2024 Paris Olympics, Donald Trump and Elon Musk publicly accused Algerian boxer Imane Khelif of being trans after her gold medal win, as part of a wave of online hate against her. She would later file a cyberbullying complaint against Musk’s X.
While women of all races have been targeted, Black women have faced harsher scrutiny due to stereotypes that portray them as more masculine.
Yearwood remembers posts that would fixate on her muscle definition and compare her to LeBron James.
“I think that is attributed to the overall hyper-masculinization and de-feminization of Black women, and I know that’s a lot more prevalent for Black trans women,” she says. “It made it easier to come for us in the way that they did.”
Joanna Harper, a post-doctoral scholar at Oregon Health & Science University and one of the world’s leading researchers on the subject, says that the jury is still out on whether the differences in athletic performance between trans and cis women are significant enough to warrant policy changes.
“People want simple solutions, they want things to be black and white, they want good guys and bad guys,” Harper says, adding that the loudest voices against trans women’s participation do not actually care about what the science says.
“This idea that trans women are bigger than cis women, therefore it can’t be fair, is a very simple idea, and so it is definitely one that people who want to create trans people as villains have pushed.”
Even Harper herself has been the victim of the far-right’s anti-trans attacks. Earlier this year, she was featured in a New York Times article where she discussed a study she was working on with funding from Nike into the effects of hormone replacement therapy (HRT) on adolescents’ athletic performance.
Riley Gaines and OutKick founder Clay Travis attack Harper’s study on X.
“That Nike chose to fund a study on trans athletes doesn’t actually say that they’re supporting trans athletes. They’re merely supporting research looking into the capabilities of trans athletes,” Harper says. “You don’t know what the research will show until you get the data … but the haters don’t want any data coming out that doesn’t support what they want to say.”
Harper says this anti-trans fervor and HRT bans are making it more difficult to conduct studies in the first place.
And while the far-right argues that they are “protecting women’s sports” in their war on trans athletes, multiple athletes and experts told Uncloseted Media that this distracts from bigger issues in women’s sports, including sexualharassment by coaches and a lack of funding.
“If the real goal was to help women’s sports, they would try to increase funding [and] support for athletes,” says Harper, noting that women’s sports receive half as much money as men’s sports at the Division I collegiate level. “But that’s not what they’re doing, and it becomes pretty evident the real motivation behind these people.”
Since Trump’s reelection, Grace McKenzie has somewhat resigned herself to the likelihood of attacks on trans people getting worse. Despite this, she finds hope in building community with other trans athletes, such as the New York City-based trans basketball league Basketdolls.
“If that’s the legacy that [the anti-trans movement] wants to leave behind, good for them,” McKenzie says. “Our legacy is going to be one about hope, and collective solidarity, and mutual aid, and I would much rather be on that side of the fence.”
Meanwhile, Fry remains hopeful that conflicts can be resolved and that trans people may be able to find a place in sports over time.
“If we could all have more positive conversations and not create such a hateful environment around this issue, it would just benefit everyone.”
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The Department of Homeland Security will update visa policies to prevent transgender women from traveling to the U.S. to participate in elite women’s sporting events.
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services issued guidance Monday intended to bar trans women athletes from obtaining “extraordinary ability” visas to compete in female sports, as was first reported by the conservative news website The Daily Wire. The guidance builds off of an executive order President Doanld Trump issued during the early weeks of his presidency that intended to bar trans women from competing in female sports.
The guidance doesn’t use the word transgender or refer to trans women, but rather refers to “male athletes” who seek to compete in women’s sports.
Matthew Tragesser, a spokesperson for USCIS, said in a statement that the agency is “closing the loophole for foreign male athletes whose only chance at winning elite sports is to change their gender identity and leverage their biological advantages against women.”
“It’s a matter of safety, fairness, respect, and truth that only female athletes receive a visa to come to the U.S. to participate in women’s sports,” Tragesser said in the statement. “The Trump Administration is standing up for the silent majority who’ve long been victims of leftist policies that defy common sense.”
The policy update applies to three visa categories for individuals who possess “extraordinary ability” in science, art, education, business or athletics. It also affects national interest waivers, which allow applicants to self-petition to waive the labor certification for a green card if they can show that their work serves the national interest.
The updated guidance clarifies that USCIS “considers the fact that a male athlete has been competing against women as a negative factor” in determining whether they are among the top in the sport.
The guidance adds that it is not in the national interest of the U.S. to waive the labor certification requirement for trans women athletes “whose proposed endeavor is to compete in women’s sports.”
USCIS did not respond to a request for comment regarding how many people could be affected by the new policy or whether there are recent examples of trans female athletes traveling to the U.S. under the affected visa categories.
Within the National Collegiate Athletic Association, the nonprofit group that regulates college athletics, about 25,000 international student athletes compete in NCAA sports out of the more than 500,000 total who compete each year, according to the association. While it’s unclear how many NCAA athletes are trans, the association’s president, Charlie Baker, told a Senate committee in December that he is aware of fewer than 10.
The USCIS policy update may have affected athletes who planned to travel to Los Angeles for the 2028 Summer Olympics; however, the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee barred trans women from competing in female sports last month.
Only a handful of trans athletes have ever competed in the Olympics. Weightlifter Laurel Hubbard became the first out trans athlete to compete in the Olympics in the Tokyo Games in 2021, though she did not medal. American skateboarder Alana Smith and Canadian soccer star Quinn also competed in the Tokyo Games, and Quinn became the first nonbinary and trans athlete to ever medal when their team won gold that year.
Female athletes aiming to compete in international women’s track and field events will be required to undergo a one-time genetic test to confirm biological sex, under new regulations from World Athletics set to take effect September 1, according to a press release.
The policy, announced ahead of the 2025 World Championships in Tokyo, mandates testing for the SRY gene, which typically indicates the presence of a Y chromosome and is used as a marker of male biological sex. The test can be administered via blood sample or cheek swab and will be overseen by national federations under World Athletics’ supervision.
The update provides procedural clarity for competitions moving forward but deepens what has long been one of track and field’s most polarizing debates — the eligibility of transgender women and athletes with differences in sex development (DSD). Critics say the policy singles out and targets gender-diverse athletes, particularly trans women and intersex athletes, while imposing no such testing on cisgender men or trans men.
Alejandra Caraballo, of the Harvard Law Cyberlaw Clinic, noted in a BlueSky post that a previous attempt to test women athletes ruined their lives and led to the suicide of Pratima Gaonkar, an intersex swimmer who won a silver medal in the 4×400 relay in the Junior Asian Athletics Championships, among other tragedies and near-fatalities.
World Athletics currently bans transgender women who have gone through male puberty from competing in women’s categories, and imposes strict testosterone suppression requirements on DSD athletes. The new rule, recommended by a working group earlier this year, adds a pre-competition SRY gene screening as an eligibility prerequisite.
The issue of gender verification in sport has caused international controversy since Caster Semenya, a South African runner with DSD, rose to prominence after winning her first world title in the 800 meters in 2009. Semenya became the public face of the debate, especially after refusing to comply with World Athletics’ 2018 policy requiring athletes like her to reduce their natural testosterone levels to compete.Just three weeks ago, Semenya won a partial legal victory at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France, which ruled that she had not received a fair hearing when the Swiss Supreme Court upheld the sport’s prior regulations. While the judgment did not overturn World Athletics’ DSD policy, it cast further doubt on the legal processes behind those rules.
The committee made the change in an updated “Athlete Safety Policy,” which does not mention the word “transgender” in any of its 27 pages. However, the document, dated June 18 but posted quietly on the USOPC’s website Monday, includes language saying the committee will comply with Trump’ s order.
“The USOPC will continue to collaborate with various stakeholders with oversight responsibilities, e.g., IOC, IPC, NGBs, to ensure that women have a fair and safe competition environment consistent with Executive Order 14201 and the Ted Stevens Olympic & Amateur Sports Act,” the document says.
U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee CEO Sarah Hirshland and President Gene Sykes acknowledged the update in a letter to the Team USA community, which was obtained by NBC News.
“As a federally chartered organization, we have an obligation to comply with federal expectations,” they said. “The guidance we’ve received aligns with the Ted Stevens Act, reinforcing our mandated responsibility to promote athlete safety and competitive fairness.”
The updated policy “emphasizes the importance of ensuring fair and safe competition environments for women,” with all national governing bodies required to update their policies to align with the updated guidelines, they added.
It’s unclear whether any Olympians would be banned from competition for the 2028 Olympics under the updated policy.
American middle-distance runner Nikki Hiltz, who is nonbinary, would presumably not be affected by the ruling because they were assigned female at birth. Hiltz finished seventh in the women’s 1,500-meter race in the 2024 Paris Games.
No athlete has won an Olympic medal while competing as an openly transgender woman.
Transgender athletes’ participation in sports has become a divisive issue in recent years, with critics largely focusing on trans girls and women. Trans competitors who were born male, critics contend, have a physical advantage over those who were born female.
But transgender athletes make up only a small proportion of the overall competitive landscape.
NCAA President Charlie Baker testified before a Senate panel in January that he knew of fewer than 10 transgender collegiate athletes among the 544,000 currently competing.
“As athletes, we know firsthand that sport has the power to change lives,” the letter said. “Allowing transgender athletes within the NCAA to participate in the sports they love as who they truly are alongside their teammates fulfills the true spirit of Olympism we all ascribe to.”
The letter expressed concerns that anti-trans legislation is “largely fueled by propaganda and deception” and that it failed to address actual threats to women’s sports. It linked to a study from the Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sportthat found transgender women “who have undergone testosterone suppression have no clear biological advantages over cis women in elite sport.”
There are already rules about an athlete’s testosterone levels. Transgender runner CeCe Telfer was deemed ineligible to participate in the 400-meter hurdles at the Paris Games last year because she failed to meet hormone-level standards.
Trump’s administration has changed passport-issuing policies to require that gender markers match people’s assigned sexes at birth. Federal prisons were ordered to move transgender women into men’s facilities, despite advocates’ voicing concerns for their safety in such situations.
Transgender people have also been banned from military service, forcing service members with years of experience and specialized training to leave their positions.
One of the most complex current issues in sports can be traced back to a track meet in Germany in 2009, when an unknown 18-year-old from South Africa blew away a field of the best female runners on the planet to win the world title. The teenager was hardly out of breath when she flexed her muscles at the end of it.
What quickly became clear is that sports faced an unprecedented dilemma with the arrival of Caster Semenya.
Now a two-time Olympic and three-time world champion in the 800 meters, the 34-year-old Semenya has been banned from competing in her favored event since 2019 by a set of rules that were crafted by track authorities because of her dominance.
They say her natural testosterone level is much higher than the typical female range and should be medically reduced for her to compete fairly against other women.
Semenya has refused to artificially alter her hormones and challenged the rules claiming discrimination at the Court of Arbitration for Sport court in Switzerland, then the Swiss Supreme Court and now the European Court of Human Rights.
Semenya answers reporters with lawyers Gregory Nott, left, and Shona Jolly after she won a partial victory at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France, on Thursday.Antonin Utz / AP
A ruling Thursday by the highest chamber of the European court — Semenya’s last legal avenue after losing at the other two — found that she was denied a fair hearing at the Swiss Supreme Court.
It kept alive Semenya’s case and reignited a yearslong battle involving individual rights on one hand and the perception of fairness in sports on the other, with implications across the sporting world.
A complex issue
Semenya is not transgender and her case has sometimes been inaccurately conflated with that of transgender athletes. She was assigned female at birth, raised as a girl and has always identified as female.
After years of secrecy because of medical confidentiality, it was made public in 2018 that she has one of a number of conditions known as differences of sex development, or DSDs. They are sometimes known as intersex conditions. Semenya was born with the typical male XY chromosome pattern and female physical traits. Her condition leads to her having testosterone levels that are higher than the typical female range.
World Athletics, the track governing body, says that gives her an unfair, male-like advantage when racing against other women because of testosterone’s link to muscle mass and cardiovascular performance. It says Semenya and a relatively small number of other DSD athletes who emerged after her must suppress their testosterone to below a specific level to compete in women’s competitions.
The case has transcended sports and reached Europe’s top rights court largely because of its core dispute: Semenya says the sports rules restrict the rights she has always known as a woman in every other facet of life and mean she can’t practice her profession. World Athletics has asserted that Semenya is “biologically male.”
How the rules work
Track and field’s regulations depend on the conclusion that higher testosterone gives rise to an athletic advantage, though that has been challenged in just one of the many complicated details of Semenya’s case.
To follow the rules, DSD athletes must suppress their testosterone to below a threshold that World Athletics says will put them in the typical female range. Athletes do that by taking daily contraceptive pills or using hormone-blocking injections and it’s checked through regular blood tests.
Semenya during a heat in the women’s 5000-meter run at the World Athletics Championships in Eugene, Ore., in 2022.Ashley Landis / AP file
Track first introduced a version of its testosterone regulations in 2011 in response to Semenya and has made them stricter over the years. The current rules require athletes affected to reduce their testosterone for at least two years before competing and throughout competitions, effectively meaning elite DSD runners would be constantly on medication to stay eligible for the biggest events like the Olympics and world championships.
That has troubled medical experts and ethicists, who have questioned the “off-label” use of birth control pills for the purpose of sports eligibility.
Semenya is not alone
While Semenya is the only athlete currently challenging the regulations, three other women who have won Olympic medals — Francine Niyonsaba of Burundi, Margaret Wambui of Kenya and Christine Mboma of Namibia — have also been sidelined by the rules.
The issue came to a head at the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, when Semenya, Niyonsaba and Wambui won the gold, silver and bronze medals in the 800 meters when the rules were temporarily suspended. Supporters of the ban cited that result as evidence they had an insurmountable advantage over other women.
World Athletics is now considering a total ban on DSD athletes like Semenya. Its president, Sebastian Coe, said in 2023 that up to 13 women in elite track and field fell under the rules without naming them.
What Thursday’s decision means
Track’s DSD rules became a blueprint for other sports like swimming, another high-profile Olympic code that has regulations. Soccer is considering testosterone rules in women’s competitions.
Sex eligibility is a burning issue for the International Olympic Committee and new president, Kirsty Coventry, who was elected in March. It was brought into urgent focus for the IOC after a sex eligibility scandal erupted at last year’s Paris Olympics over female boxers Imane Khelif of Algeria and Lin Yu-ting of Taiwan.
Most sports will watch the direction of Semenya’s case closely as it is sent back to the Swiss Supreme Court, and possibly to sport’s highest court, even though that could take years. The ultimate outcome — whether a victory for Semenya or for World Athletics — would set a definitive precedent for sports because there has never been a case like it.
Indiana’s new law banning transgender female athletes from competing in college and university sports has gone into effect this month. The ban expands the state’s pre-existing ban on trans female athletes in K-12 school sports; a ban which was passed despite the state only having one trans female high school athlete.
The bill — which passed the state Senate in February, the state House in April, and was signed by a Gov. Mike Braun (R) that same month — applies to all public colleges and universities, and any private school competing against a public institution, the Public News Service reported.
The law “prohibits a male, based on the student’s biological sex at birth in accordance with the student’s genetics and reproductive biology, from participating on an athletic team or sport designated as being a female, women’s, or girls’ athletic team or sport.” It also requires state schools and some private schools to “establish grievance procedures for a violation of these provisions.”
It also allows students and parents to file legal complaints if they suspect that a state student played alongside a trans athlete.
If they wanted to protect women in sports, they would be doing things like being certain that women’s teams have the same funding as men’s teams.”– Emma Vosicky, CEO of GenderNexus
The legislation extends the state’s anti-trans sports policies that already exist for K-12 athletes. In 2022, the Indiana legislature voted to override then-Gov. Eric Holcomb’s (R) veto of an anti-trans sports bill, which banned trans girls and women from participating in school sports. Holcomb claimed it was unconstitutional and addressed a nonexistent issue in the state.
In February, Paul Neidig, commissioner of the Indiana High School Athletic Association, said that only one trans female athlete had asked to play on girls’ sports team and she later withdrew her application to play, WISH-TV reported.
The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), which covers 1,100 nationwide colleges and universities with over 530,000 student-athletes, recently said that only 10 athletes in the entire association identify as trans, a number accounting for less than 0.002% of NCAA athletes nationwide.
Nevertheless, in March, Braun also signed two anti-trans executive orders, one banning trans women from women’s sports at the collegiate level and the other declaring there are only two genders: male and female.
“Women’s sports create opportunities for young women to earn scholarships and develop leadership skills,” he said in a statement at the time. “Hoosiers overwhelmingly don’t want those opportunities destroyed by allowing biological males to compete in women’s sports, and today’s executive order will make sure of that.”
However, Emma Vosicky, CEO of the state trans advocacy organization GenderNexus, criticized Braun’s orders for doing nothing to actually protect female athletes.
“If they wanted to protect women in sports, they would be doing things like being certain that women’s teams have the same funding as men’s teams, that income levels which change your ability to travel on traveling squads, hire trainers, those sorts of things,” she said. “Those are the things that create inequity and those are the things that are not done, which makes it obvious that this is about coming after folks who are gender-diverse.”
Zoe O’Haillin-Berne, director of marketing and communications for the Indiana Youth Group (an LGBTQ+ youth organization), said. “Laws like [this] do more than restrict sports participation. They send a loud and resounding message that transgender youth do not belong in Indiana.”
“1041 is built on the false claim that transgender girls are dominating women’s sports,” they added. “In reality, most transgender youth avoid sports altogether. They do this because of the scrutiny and bullying that they face on a day-to-day basis.”
On a national scale, the current presidential administration has threatened to withhold pre-approved congressional funds from states that allow trans female athletes to compete alongside cisgender girls and women. Maine and California have publicly stood up to the president’s demands on this issue, but 29 states now have policies restricting trans sports participation.
The University of Pennsylvania has agreed to ban transgender women from its women’s sports teams to resolve a federal civil rights case that found the school violated the rights of female athletes.
The U.S. Education Department announced the voluntary agreement Tuesday. The case focused on Lia Thomas, the transgender swimmer who last competed for the Ivy League school in Philadelphia in 2022, when she became the first openly transgender athlete to win a Division I title.
It’s part of the Trump administration’s broader attempt to remove transgender athletes from girls’ and women’s sports.
Under the agreement, Penn agreed to restore all individual Division I swimming records and titles to female athletes who lost out to Thomas, the Education Department said. Penn also agreed to send a personalized apology letter to each of those swimmers.
It wasn’t immediately clear whether Thomas would be stripped of her awards and honors at Penn.
The university must also announce that it “will not allow males to compete in female athletic programs” and it must adopt “biology-based” definitions of male and female, the department said.
Education Secretary Linda McMahon called it a victory for women and girls.
“The Department commends UPenn for rectifying its past harms against women and girls, and we will continue to fight relentlessly to restore Title IX’s proper application and enforce it to the fullest extent of the law,” McMahon said in a statement.
The Education Department opened its investigation in February and concluded in April that Penn had violated Title IX, a 1972 law forbidding sex discrimination in education. Such findings have almost always been resolved through voluntary agreements. If Penn had fought the finding, the department could have moved to refer the case to the Justice Department or pursued a separate process to cut the school’s federal funding.
In February, the Education Department asked the NCAA and the National Federation of State High School Associations, or NFSHSA, to restore titles, awards and records it says have been “misappropriated by biological males competing in female categories.”
The most obvious target at the college level was in women’s swimming, where Thomas won the national title in the 500-yard freestyle in 2022.
The NCAA has updated its record books when recruiting and other violations have stripped titles from certain schools, but the organization, like the NFSHSA, has not responded to the federal government’s request. Determining which events had a transgender athlete participating years later would be challenging.
The Supreme Court on Thursday waded into the legal fight over state laws that ban transgender athletes from competing in girls’ and women’s school and college sports, taking up cases from West Virginia and Idaho.
The court will hear cases involving two transgender students, Becky Pepper-Jackson and Lindsay Hecox, who challenged state bans in West Virginia and Idaho, respectively.
Both won injunctions that allow them to continue to compete in sports. Pepper-Jackson, now 15, takes puberty blocking medication, while Hecox, a 24-year-old college student, has received testosterone suppression and estrogen treatments.
“Categorically excluding kids from school sports just because they are transgender will only make our schools less safe and more hurtful places for all youth,” said Joshua Block, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union, who is part of the legal team representing both students. “We believe the lower courts were right to block these discriminatory laws, and we will continue to defend the freedom of all kids to play.”
West Virginia Attorney General JB McCuskey welcomed the Supreme Court’s intervention.
“The people of West Virginia know that it’s unfair to let male athletes compete against women; that’s why we passed this commonsense law preserving women’s sports for women,” he said.
Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador, who is defending that state’s law, echoed those sentiments, saying that “women and girls deserve an equal playing field.”
Oral arguments will likely take place later this year, with a ruling expected by June 2026.
The states both enacted bans that categorically bar transgender students from participating in girls’ or women’s sports. More than half the 50 states now have such laws, but legal challenges have not been decisively resolved.
The fight for and against the expansion of transgender rights has become a flashpoint nationwide and was an issue in the recent presidential election, with Donald Trump denigrating Democrats for supporting the effort. His administration has begun to roll back measures taken by President Joe Biden to expand protections for transgender people.
In February, the National Collegiate Athletic Association also changed course,announcing a new policy to limit women’s sports to “student-athletes assigned female at birth only.”
In Pepper-Jackson’s case, a federal judge initially ruled in her favor but concluded in January 2023 that the law was most likely legal and allowed it to be enforced against her. Pepper-Jackson appealed, and the Richmond, Virginia-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals blocked West Virginia officials from enforcing it against her.
The Supreme Court in April 2023 rejected the state’s attempt to enforce the law against Pepper-Jackson while the litigation continues, meaning she has been able to continue to participate in school sports, namely cross-country and track.
Hecox, who plays soccer and also runs, similarly obtained an injunction from a district court judge against Idaho officials. She also won on appeal at the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Pepper-Jackson and Hecox both failed to qualify for running teams at their respective schools, according to court papers. Pepper-Jackson did place third in the state for middle school discus and sixth in middle school shot put, losing out to cisgender girls. She finished 67th out of 68 in a cross-country event in eighth grade.
In barring transgender girls from participating in girls sports at the middle school, high school and college levels, the West Virginia law enacted in 2021 says gender is “based solely on the individual’s reproductive biology and genetics at birth.” As such, it says, a female is a person “whose biological sex determined at birth as female.”
The Idaho law, passed in 2020, states that sports “designated for females, women, or girls should not be open to students of the male sex.”
Both cases concern whether such laws violate the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which requires that the law apply equally to everyone. Pepper-Jackson’s case also raises a claim under Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, which prohibits sex discrimination in education.
The Biden administration unveiled proposals on how Title IX applies to transgender athletes, saying that blanket bans would be unlawful but concluding that it may be lawful to limit involvement in competitive sports.
But the the Trump administration has reversed course, with the White House issuing an executive order titled: “Keeping Men out of Women’s Sports.”
In 2020, the Supreme Court ruled that federal law barring sex discrimination in employment protected LGBTQ people, a ruling that angered conservatives. The court is yet to rule on whether the same reasoning applies to Title IX.
