“Denying transgender athletes their fundamental right to be themselves, have access to the sports they love, and receive the proven physical and mental health benefits of sports violates the principles of the NCAA Constitution. ”, one of the letters states. The document includes former women's national soccer team star Megan Rapinoe, her partner and former WNBA star Sue Bird, and transgender and non-binary current WNBA player Layshia Clarendon of the Los Angeles Sparks. More than 400 people, including current and former professional and university athletes from the sports world, have signed the petition. . Many other WNBA, USWNT and NWSL players also signed.
“We call on you to stand on the right side of history and ensure that sport is truly for all of us,” the letter continued. “Please don’t ban transgender women from NCAA women’s sports.”
Athlete Ally also sent a letter signed by more than 300 academics and researchers and more than 100 gay advocacy groups making similar demands. The NCAA did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday morning.
Earlier this month, the National Intercollegiate Athletics Association, which is made up primarily of small private schools, voted to ban all transgender women from women's sports, regardless of whether the athlete is undergoing gender-affirming hormone therapy. did. But that's not the only reason the conversation has been hot this month. Even before the NAIA took action, transgender rights activists believed the NCAA Board of Governors would hold a de facto vote this week on transgender athlete policy. The same supporters now believe the vote is likely to be postponed.
Either way, the end of April and early May is typically a critical rulemaking period for the NCAA. Over the past week, the organization passed legislation on transfer and name, image and likeness (NIL) rules. Most of the new policies will go into effect in early August, when fall sports begin.
The board will meet virtually on Thursday. At the same time, the NCAA will host its annual Inclusion Forum in Indianapolis at its headquarters in Indianapolis. It's also unclear how much the board will discuss potential changes to the transgender athlete policy, although the organization typically can make decisions at any point on the calendar.
Meanwhile, anti-transgender activists are taking similar action, calling on the NCAA to adopt regulations similar to the NAIA. Nancy Hogshead-Makar, U.S. Olympic swimming gold medalist and CEO of advocacy group Champion Women, urges supporters to email form letters to the board. Launched an email campaign.
“Recent decisions like the NAIA's demonstrate a commitment to preserving sports categories based on biological sex and ensuring that female athletes are not treated unfairly,” the letter said. “These policies not only protect the safety and integrity of our sport, but also reinforce the principle that female athletes should compete against each other on an equal footing.”
Adding to the pressure on the NCAA, on April 15, 17 House Republicans sent a letter to Baker asking the board to ban transgender women from competing. “We are deeply concerned about the future of women's sports and that the NCAA's current policy preserves important Title IX protections for women's sports,” the letter reads. “We urge the NCAA to follow the NAIA’s lead on this issue and ban transgender athletes from participating in women’s sports.”
The Biden administration's new Title IX guidelines, finalized Friday, do not address the issue of transgender athletes' participation in college sports. According to the Associated Press, another update on this matter is expected.
In 2022, the NCAA instituted a sport-specific approach that requires athletes to follow guidelines set by the international governing body of a particular sport. International sports governing bodies are grappling with how to create scientifically sound and fair rules. World Swimming and World Athletics are among the organizations that have significantly restricted the eligibility of transgender girls and women, barring them from competing if they are experiencing testosterone-driven puberty.
If transgender women are not barred from women's competition, the NCAA could choose to move into the third and final phase of implementing the 2022 policy for the 2024-25 academic year. In December 2023, the governing body's Competition Protection and Medical Affairs Committee recommended that the full implementation of the policy be postponed until the policy is further considered.
Transgender athletes have recently been the subject of conservative attacks and scrutiny at the K-12, college, and Olympic levels. Since 2020, about half of U.S. states have enacted measures banning transgender girls and women, and in some cases boys and men, from publicly funded academic sports in categories that correspond to their gender identity. (Some of these bans have been challenged in court, and a transgender girl in West Virginia whose ban was passed was recently ruled eligible to compete on the women's cross country team by a federal appeals court.) received the verdict)
“None of us have heard from the NCAA regarding this ruling. [potentially] “I'm a transgender woman,” said Sadie Schreiner, a transgender woman who runs the 400 and 200 meters on the Division III Rochester Institute of Technology track and field team. “No one listens to me.”
In eighth grade, long before Schreiner made the switch, she ran the 400 meters in 55 seconds, but today's fastest time was 56 seconds, said Schreiner, a sophomore. This points to the fact that research on transgender athletes is not straightforward. A new study published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine found that transgender women in sport are at a physical disadvantage in several areas, including lung function, compared to cisgender women. It concluded that the “complexity” of the problem required further research.
