Trump set to ban trans women from female sports with new executive order
Donald Trump is expected to sign a trans sport ban (Celal Gunes/Anadolu via Getty Images)
US president Donald Trump is expected to sign executive order banning trans women from participating in women’s and girls sporting events.
According to American news agency the Associated Press, Trump will make good on his campaign promises to “keep men out of women’s sports” by signing the order on Wednesday afternoon (6 February), which will coincide with National Girls and Women in Sports Day.
The executive order will be the latest in a litany of anti-trans policies invoked by the Trump administration following his inauguration on 20 January, including declaring the official policy of the United States is that there are “only two sexes”, banning trans people from serving in the military and restricting gender-affirming healthcare for trans people under the age 19.
Alongside these attacks on the trans community, Trump has also signed orders eliminating diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programmes across the government and in the armed forces.
The specific contents of the executive order are not yet known but it is widely believed it will stipulate how Title IX – a landmark piece of civil rights legislation – should be used to exclude trans women from female sports.
Introduced in 1972, Title IX protects people from sex-based discrimination in education programmes or activities that receive federal financial assistance and is best-known for ensuring gender equality in college sports.
In recent months and years, interpretations of the scope of Title IX have been hotly contested in the context of trans inclusion in sports, particularly following the Biden administration’s update to the legislation – first proposed in 2022 – which aimed to provide explicit protections for LGBTQ+ pupils and prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.
In response, several Republican-controlled states vowed to reject the law, suing the Biden administration and labelling the legislation “illegal, undemocratic and divorced from reality” and claiming it puts “women at risk”, with the US supreme court stating in August 2024 the changed definitions cannot be enforced in 26 states where legal challenges are ongoing.
Most recently, at the beginning of January Republicans sought to define Title IX protections solely on the basis on biological sex in their rules package for the 119th Congress.
Commenting on the expected executive order, South Carolina representative Nancy Mace – who initiated the US Capitol’s trans bathroom ban – said: “This executive order restores fairness, upholds Title IX’s original intent, and defends the rights of female athletes who have worked their whole lives to compete at the highest levels.”
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