President Biden’s executive order prohibiting LGBTQ discrimination in federally funded athletics represents a significant step forward for transgender women athletes.
What it says: The order — which targets discrimination in all areas, not just sports — states that schools receiving federal funding must allow transgender girls onto girls’ sports teams or face federal action.
Why it matters: The Human Rights Campaign called it “the most substantive, wide-ranging executive order concerning sexual orientation and gender identity ever issued by a United States president.”
The state of play: As it stands, policies surrounding trans participation in youth sports differ state-by-state.
- 10 states are “trans exclusive”: Participation must match gender assigned at birth.
- 17 states plus D.C. are “trans inclusive”: Trans girls can play with cis girls regardless of how far along their transition is.
- 17 other states are “trans inclusive (if)”: Trans girls can play with cis girls as long as they’ve taken gender-affirming hormones for a year.
- Six states have no policy.
Of note: While you can find studies proving trans women have no competitive advantage, you can find others proving the opposite.
Between the lines: The long-raging debate that Biden’s order reopened is a nuanced one. So while the extreme solutions — full inclusion or full exclusion — are easier to digest, they’re not indicative of the debate’s true nature.
- A group of high-profile women sports leaders, including Martina Navratilova, has proposed legislation to exempt girls’ and women’s sports from Biden’s order.
- Rather than blanket inclusion, they want to take a more scientific approach, limiting participation of transgender girls and women who “have experienced all or part of male puberty.”
- But they still want to accommodate their participation through things like separate heats, additional events and/or the handicapping of results.
What they’re saying: Casey Pick (she/her pronouns) of The Trevor Project, which provides support for LGBTQ youth, says “the goal is just to have equal opportunities and let folks play if they want to play.”
- “We can uphold female sports and allow for participation by everybody at the same time,” Pick tells me. “This is not a zero sum game.”
- On the other side, WSJ’s Abigail Shrier argues that cisgender girls could be discouraged from participating if they know they’ll be “demoralized by the blatant unfairness of a rigged competition.”
The bottom line: This order is a step forward for the trans community and their advocates, but it’s a complex issue that won’t go away after a simple stroke of the president’s pen.
Go deeper: The impact of sports on LGBTQ youth (Axios)