President Donald Trump signed an executive order titled “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports” on Feb. 5 prohibiting transgender women and girls from competing in women’s collegiate sports in the National Collegiate Athletic Association. The executive order fulfills a central promise of Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign.
The NCAA currently governs 1,100 American universities and schools that do not comply risk losing federal funding.
“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,” NCAA President Charlie Baker said in a Feb. 6 statement. “To that end, President Trump’s order provides a clear, national standard.”
Varsity girls volleyball coach Chris Crader said while the issue has many layers, he agrees the executive order does standardize rules.
“I don’t feel like the government needed to make a blanket rule, but I also think the NCAA is in a pretty weak state right now,” Crader said. “Different states have different laws, so this order does provide one, clear solution.”
Nearly 80% of Americans do not think transgender female athletes should be allowed to compete in women’s sports, according to a recent New York Times and Ipsos poll.
Former University of Kentucky swimmer and conservative activist Riley Gaines, who has become an outspoken opponent of trans women in women’s sports, attended the signing ceremony and praised the trans sports ban on social media.
“I can’t even begin to tell you how vindicating it feels knowing no girl will ever have to experience what my teammates and I did,” Gaines posted on X, formerly known as Twitter.
For those opposed to the new order, Crader said the solution might be that each sport has its own criteria.
“It’d be nice to have the same rules across all 50 states, and across sports,” Crader said. “But as we learn more about what advantages, or not, that transgender women have, I think that each sport could be different. For example, being taller is an advantage in basketball or volleyball, but is probably a disadvantage in gymnastics or diving or maybe wrestling. So the fairest solution might be that each sport might have different eligibility requirements.”
Many who support the executive order, though, say male bodies are biologically advantaged.
“No amount of activism, corporate pressure or lies can erase reality — men are biologically different from women,” U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C said in a Feb. 4 press release.
Many students echo this sentiment, including sophomore JV volleyball outside hitter Elena DeLorenzo.
“(Male bodies) are usually a lot taller, and they also can jump a lot higher, so they automatically have an advantage, which I feel is really unfair,” DeLorenzo said.
While some opponents of transgender athletes competing in women’s sports argue transgender women have athletic advantages, the reality is more nuanced according to a cross-sectional study published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.
This study concluded transgender women had reduced athletic capabilities and were not as advantaged as before their physical transition and after undergoing gender-affirming hormone care. However, the authors of the study recommended further longitudinal study be done on the subject before making definitive conclusions.
Dr. Audriana Mooth, a sports medicine fellow at Stanford University, said gender-affirming care can decrease the athletic advantages of transgender women, but without a consistent level of change in performance.
“Trans women undergoing gender-affirming care with hormone therapy tend to develop decreased muscle mass, increased fat mass, and decreased hemoglobin concentrations, which can decrease muscle strength and maximal oxygen carrying capacity and thus can impact athletic performance,” Mooth said. “Not everyone has the same change in these factors, and everyone also has different body types to begin with so there are many confounding variables.”
While both the study and Mooth found that transgender women have no significant athletic advantages, other studies say there is insufficient data to point one way or another.
Beyond athletics, Mooth said the benefits of letting transgender women participate in women’s sports are important to consider and that the evidence to ban them is not sufficient.
“From a medical standpoint, we don’t have data to support banning transgender athletes from women’s collegiate sports in regards to athletic performance or advantage,” Mooth said. “We do have data that gender-affirming care and participation in sports improves the mental health and safety of transgender individuals, so my standpoint as a sports medicine physician would be that we should not ban transgender women from competing in collegiate women’s sports.”
While many support this executive order, it has faced resistance. Two transgender public high school students in New Hampshire are challenging this executive order. Parker Tirrell and Iris Turmelle, students at Plymouth Regional High School and Pembroke Academy, respectively, had previously sued New Hampshire education officials over a state law that prevented them from competing on girls’ sports teams at their public high schools. On Feb 12., their lawyers from GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders and the American Civil Liberties Union of New Hampshire amended the complaint, asking to expand the case to challenge Trump’s executive order.
Chris Erchull, Senior Staff Attorney at GLAD Law, one of Tirell and Turmelle’s representatives, thinks that the executive order is another action meant to exclude transgender people from society.
“The Trump Administration’s executive orders amount to a coordinated campaign to prevent transgender people from functioning in society,” Erchull said in a Feb. 12 statement. “School sports are an important part of education — something no child should be denied simply because of who they are.”
Some feel that the executive order is meant to target transgender people’s rights, as Baker testified to Congress in December, saying that he was aware of “less than 10” transgender athletes among the more than half a million student-athletes governed by the NCAA.
Crader said one problem he sees with this executive order is that it is another challenge for a community already facing immense difficulties.
“I did see this order as another blow to an already hurting community, which is tough,” Crader said. “The combination of executive orders regarding transgender individuals, and the lack of empathy within them, has saddened me.”
Ultimately, Mooth said that she thinks that while people’s stances on this issue can be polarized, it is important to approach the discussion with an open mind.
Mooth said, “While there are certainly opposing views, we should all approach this issue with compassion and empathy, and base our decisions off of available evidence.
