Donald Trump prohibited the participation of transgender athletes in women’s sports

The president of the United States, Donald Trumpkeep stepping hard with its first measures and signed on Wednesday an executive order that It prohibits the participation of transgender athletes in women’s sports by arguing that “if you are going to offer opportunities for women, They have to have equally safe and equally fair and that implies reserving female sport for women. ”

The order was entitled “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports” (keep men out of women’s sport) and gives faculties to the departments of justice and education for guarantee that entities that receive federal funds comply with this mandate, based on the definition of sex assigned to birth.

In it National Women’s Day in it Sport in the United States, Trump He said: “With this executive order, the war against female sport is over”He said during the signature ceremony.

This decision arises from a reinterpretation of the law Title IXwhich prohibits sexual discrimination in educational programs with federal financing. According to Karoline Leavitt, Secretary Press of the White Housethe measure “reaffirms the promise of title IX” and will require “immediate actions, including compliance measures against sports schools and associations” that allow the participation of trans women in female competitions or access to exclusive changing rooms for women.

The executive order ensures that the Republican president will receive athletes in the White House to listen to the stories of “female athletes who have suffered injuries, have been silenced or They have had to share changing rooms and compete against men. ”

This is a new measure that Trump takes to the transgender population such as limitations to the recognition of gender identity in passports and prisons, restrictions on gender teaching in schools and the exclusion of trans people from military service. However, these decisions aroused strong claims by civil rights groups and the new order is also expected to face challenges in the courts. Lawyers who litigated similar cases argued that some of these measures They violate laws approved by Congress and constitutional rights, in addition to exceeding the presidential authority.

During his campaign, the president defended his position with the motto “Keep men out of women’s sports”a message that, according to an AP survey prior to the elections, had broad support, beyond the party differences. More than half of the respondents considered that government support for trans rights had gone too far.

The announcement occurred one day after three teammates of the transgender swimmer Lia Thomas sued the NCAA, the Ivy League, Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania (Penn), claiming that They conspired to allow Thomas’s participation in national and conference championships. Demand maintains that this decision Viola Title IX And he joins another presented last year by swimmer Riley Gaines, who was present at the signing of the executive order.

Donald Trump points against the inclusion of trans women in sport

Although the inclusion of transgender athletes in women’s sports is a constant and still open debate, a report by Sports Medicine magazine reported in 2017 that there are no “direct or consistent evidence” that demonstrate that transgender people have sports advantage.

In 2023, a review of the same article concluded that gender differences They develop after pubertybut many are “reduced, if they are not eliminated, over time through hormonal gender affirmation therapy.” The physical attributes that They could work in favor of trans girlslike the height or length of the limbs, for example, they seem to be “Less malleable”, According to the study, but also pointed out that There are no efforts to restrict cycling athletes that are higher than average or that are physically gifted in some other way.

In turn, the amount of transgender athletes in women’s professional sport is minimal. Charlie Baker, president of the National University Sports Association (NCAA) said during an audience in Congress in Washington in December that he believed that there were less than 10 transgender athletes among the 510,000 that competed in schools.

Even, there are currently sports federations such as swimming, athletics and golf that restrict the participation of transgender women in female competitions at a professional level if they crossed puberty as men.

“This is a solution looking for a problem,” said Cheryl Cooky, a professor at the University of Purdue specialized in the relationship between gender and sport in dialogue with AP.