KUALA LUMPUR – United States President Donald Trump today signed an executive order to ban such transgender athletes from participating in girls’ and women’s sports events.
Under the order, educational institutes that allow transgirls and transwomen to participate in female sports and use female locker rooms will be denied federal government funding.
According to Al-Jazeera, the order also directs government agencies to promote sex-based female sports categories at international organisations and convene representatives of major athletic organisations and governing bodies to promote “policies that are fair and safe, in the best interests of female athletes”.
“We are putting every school receiving taxpayer dollars on notice. 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,” Trump said, referring to a 1972 law that bars sex discrimination in education.
Trump said that his administration would not “stand by and watch men beat and batter female athletes”.
“We’re just not going to let it happen, and it’s going to end, and it’s ending right now and no nobody is going to be able to do a damn thing about it because when I speak, we speak with authority.”
Trump also said he would push the International Olympic Committee, which has left the issue of trans people’s participation in sports to international governing bodies, to explicitly endorse sex-based participation before the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.
“We want them to change everything having to do with the Olympics and having to do with this absolutely ridiculous subject,” the US president said.
Trans women’s participation in sport has been a lightning rod in the US culture wars in recent years, though the number of athletes involved is small.
Meanwhile, National Collegiate Athletics Association (NCAA) president, Charlie Baker said that Trump’s order sets ‘ clear, national standard’.
In December, Baker told a US Senate panel that fewer than 10 trans athletes were competing among the 520,000 athletes at colleges across the country.
It is understood that growing public opposition to trans women competing after high-profile controversies involving athletes, such as college swimmer Lia Thomas, who won the NCAA Division I national championship in 2022 before being barred from women’s events by World Aquatics.
In a 2023 Gallup poll, 69% of Americans said trans athletes should only be allowed to compete on sports teams that align with their sex, a seven-point rise compared with 2021. – February 6, 2025