President Donald Trump has signed an executive order to block federal funding for schools that allow transgender girls and women to compete on girls’ and women’s sports teams. The order also directs the Department of Justice to prosecute schools that allow trans female athletes in female sports programs.
Additionally, the order seeks to convene representatives of major athletic organizations and governing sports bodies to establish anti-trans guidelines. It also threatens to prevent cisgender U.S. athletes from competing in international sports competitions that allow international trans athletes to compete alongside cis athletes.
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“Many educational institutions and athletic associations have allowed men to compete in women’s sports,” the order states, misgendering trans female athletes. “This is demeaning, unfair, and dangerous to women and girls, and denies women and girls the equal opportunity to participate and excel in competitive sports.”
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“Therefore, it is the policy of the United States to rescind all funds from educational programs that deprive women and girls of fair athletic opportunities, which results in the endangerment, humiliation, and silencing of women and girls and deprives them of privacy,” the order continues. “It shall also be 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.”
Trump’s order follows his previous anti-trans orders by re-interpreting Title IX in a way that directly opposite to the previous administration of former President Joe Biden. Biden interpreted the 1972 law forbidding sex-based discrimination in education as forbidding discrimination against trans students. Trump’s orders have interpreted Title IX as requiring schools to deny the existence of trans people in order to purportedly protect students from sex-based discrimination.
Despite Biden’s trans-inclusive reading of Title IX, his administration never issued guidelines telling schools how to handle the issue of trans participation of sports. Rather, the Biden administration initially proposed a rule change in April 2023 to allow K-12 schools and universities to limit the participation of transgender athletes in sports while also forbidding schools from completely banning trans athletes altogether. The administration rescinded this rule change in December 2024, basically saying that the issue was too complex and legally contentious to pursue.
Nevertheless, Trump’s order now tasks the secretary of education and attorney general with taking actions — including penalties and lawsuits — against any schools 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.”
The order also tasks federal agencies with ending funding for any schools that allow participation of trans female athletes on female sports teams and in female locker room spaces.
Trump’s order also specifically opposes the policies of numerous sports governing bodies that allow trans women to compete against women as long as the trans women reduce the testosterone in their bodies below certain levels or provide documentation of sincerely held gender identity.
“These policies are unfair to female athletes and do not protect female safety,” the order states. In an effort to change such policies, the order seeks to convene representatives of major athletic organizations and governing sports bodies within 60 days to commit to policies that would exclude trans female competitors from competing alongside cis.
Within that same time span, the order seeks to convene state attorneys general to “identify best practices in defining and enforcing equal opportunities for women to participate in sports and educate them about stories of women and girls who have been harmed by male participation in women’s sports.”
The order tasks the secretary of state and U.S. representatives to the United Nations to end all participation in all trans-inclusive sports programs and encourage foreign countries to develop anti-trans sports policies. It also asks the secretary of state to pressure the International Olympic Committee into banning trans athletes from future Olympic Games.
Before signing the order, Trump claimed that it would “not allow men to beat up, injure, and cheat our women and our girls.” He claimed that trans athletes have won “more than 3,500 victories” and “invaded more than 11,000 competitions,” but provided no proof for this claim.
He also falsely said that “a male boxer stole the women’s gold medal” at the Paris Olympics after “brutalizing his female opponent so viciously that she had to forfeit,” a reference to cis female Algerian boxer Imane Khelif, who was falsely accused her of being trans during the international games.
Trump then thanked the anti-LGBTQ+ extremist “parents’ rights” group Moms for Liberty for their support of his order.
During a press briefing earlier in the day, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said that Trump’s order is “federal law.” (It isn’t.) Leavitt also said the order would begin “ a very public pressure campaign” on the National Collegiate Athletics Association (NCAA) and the U.S. Olympics Committee to ban trans athletes; but neither is required to follow executive orders because neither recieves federal funding.
Trans athletes have argued that anti-trans politicians who claim talk about “protecting women’s sports” never fight to get increased funding or discourage the sexist discrimination and sexual abuse that keep many female athletes from competing in the first place.
In a statement against the order, Human Rights Campaign president Kelley Robinson said, “We all want sports to be fair, students to be safe, and young people to have the opportunity to participate alongside their peers. But an attempted blanket ban deprives kids of those things. This order could expose young people to harassment and discrimination, emboldening people to question the gender of kids who don’t fit a narrow view of how they’re supposed to dress or look.”
“[Trump’s order] comes at a time when the Trump Administration continues to distract and divide the country, handing the keys to the federal government to unelected billionaires and refusing to address urgent issues that the country is facing,” Robinson continued. “Participating in sports is about learning the values of teamwork, dedication, and perseverance. And for so many students, sports are about finding somewhere to belong. We should want that for all kids – not partisan policies that make life harder for them.”
In a separate statement, the LGBTQ+ watchdog organization GLAAD wrote, “This administration’s latest inaccurate and incoherent piece of paper smears an entire group of Americans but does not change the law or the facts. All women and girls, including transgender women and girls, should be welcome to play sports if they want, make decisions about their own bodies, be hired for jobs they are qualified for, and be free from lawless attacks by elected officials.”
Right now, 27 states have policies banning trans athletes from competing in girls’ and women’s sports. Some of theses laws affect not only grades K through 12 but also competitive university teams and co-ed intramural recreation leagues. Such policies have resulted in cis girls and women being “trans-vestigated” whenever an opponent or teammate suspects them of being trans.
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