Trump bans transgender athletes from participating in women’s sports

President Donald Trump has signed an executive order aiming to effectively ban transgender athletes participating in women’s and girl’s sport teams.

The Washington Post explains that the order directs the Department of Education to inform schools that allowing transgender athletes to compete would be breaking the law on gender discrimination at educational institutions.

The BBC reports that the executive order mostly covers high schools, universities, and grassroots sports, with the Department of Education investigating institutions thought to be non-compliant.

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According to The Washington Post, schools that discriminate based on gender are not eligible for federal funding, meaning that institutions that allow female transgender athletes to compete will be denied financing.

The Washington Post explains that conservatives claim that trans women and girls have an unfair advantage to their cisgender counterparts in addition to safety concerns.

LGBT advocates, meanwhile, claim that these concerns are exaggerated and cite studies that show trans women and girls have no noticeable advantages in athletic competitions.

“From now on, women’s sports will be only for women”, Trump said before a cheering crowd in the East Room of the White House, as quoted by The Washington Post. “The war on women’s sports is over”.

Trump’s decision reverts the position of the Biden Administration, the BBC highlights. A federal law protecting LGBT students was passed in April 2024, although it didn’t directly address transgender athletes.

Despite Trump's executive order, the controversy still continues in the United States and around the globe.

The BBC explains that a number of sports governing bodies, such as swimming, athletics and golf, have banned transgender athletes to participate on top women’s category level if they have gone through male puberty.

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Even the International Chess Federation stopped allowing trans women participating in female championships in 2023, despite being a strategy board game.

Some sports governing bodies have responded putting a limit on the testosterone levels of female athletes. However, this has ended up also affecting cisgender women as well.

Algerian Olympic boxer Imane Khelif was accused online during the 2024 Paris Olympic Games of being a man that had secretly infiltrated into the women’s category.

Something similar happened to South African two-time Olympic champion Caster Semenya. CNN reveals that she was forced to take medication to reduce her testosterone levels to continue competing, which had an adverse effect on her health.

According to CNN, Semenya won her appeal to the European Court of Human Rights to end “discriminatory” testosterone limits imposed on female athletes.

However, the question of trans athletes in sports, which doesn’t have a simple nor easy answer, continues to linger on.

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