CNN —
On Monday, the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics voted to adopt a new plan that essentially forbids trans women from participating in the majority of its women’s professional sports programs.
The NAIA, a sport organization consisting of 241 mainly smaller member colleges and universities as of 2023, governs professional athletics for more than 83,000 pupil-athletes, according to its website.
Just NAIA student-athletes whose biological gender is female may compete in NAIA-sponsored female sports, according to the organization’s fresh trans participation policy. They determine “natural sex” as having “distinguishing traits and can be supported by birth document or signed oath.”
According to scientists and LGBTQ rights advocates, like definitions do not account for the richness of sex and gender, and they argue that science does not preclude a person’s sex identity.
The fresh NAIA scheme, which takes effect August 1, just bans transgender women and girls from participating. Transgender men and boys are exempt from having to play on women’s teams under the new rules if they were born a woman and have not started hormone treatment. If they have begun hormone treatment, they are able to attend in “all activities that are internal to the organization, including workouts, practices,” but the relationship defers to individual schools to determine if trans men can compete at the undergraduate level.
If their team has a trans man student-athlete who has begun hormone replacement therapy, any NAIA university or organization will also be required to notify the agency’s regional office. The firm stated that it would “take the necessary steps to provide correct privacy protections.”
Dynamic cheering and dancing, which the NAIA claims are open to all students, are free from the new regulations.
Monday’s news was met with sharp protest from LGBTQ rights advocates. Athlete Ally, an organization that works to remove stigmatization and bigotry in sports, said the new plan “just cultivates exclusion and discrimination.”
“This policy is a failure of leadership by NAIA and marks a sad day for women’s sports,” said Athlete Ally founder &, Executive Director Hudson Taylor, in a statement shared with CNN.
Chris Mosier, the first transgender man to compete for Team USA, wrote in an Instagram post that he believes the decision is “clearly due to political pressure and not any real issue with transgender women in NAIA sports.”
The Human Rights Campaign, an LGBTQ advocacy group, also wrote in a post on X that “making decisions based on right-wing misinformation campaigns is NOT good policy — it’s discrimination.”
Transgender sports participation has recently become a bulwark in the LGBTQ rights debate. Supporters of banning transgender athletes contend that Title IX, which guarantees equal and separate opportunities for women to play sports in federally funded educational programs or activities, is required by the rules. However, critics point out that the victims of anti-trans policies are also women and girls who are denied the opportunity to play sports.
Transgender women have a physical advantage over cisgender women in sports, claim opponents of a ban on transgender women from women’s sports.
But mainstream science does not support that conclusion. No direct or consistent research has been done on trans people having an advantage over their cisgender peers, according to a 2017 report in the journal Sports Medicine, and critics claim the bans increase the discrimination that trans people experience.
The scientific debate over whether androgenic hormones like testosterone can be used as useful indicators of athletic ability is still ongoing.
More than a dozen current and former female athletes filed a lawsuit against the NCAA in March, alleging that the organization violated Title IX by allowing transgender swimmer Lia Thomas to compete for the University of Pennsylvania’s women’s swim team during NCAA competitions, according to a report from CNN.
The NCAA, which regulates larger-scale intercollegiate athletics, requires transgender student-athletes to have testosterone tested both before and after competing in a certain way.
However, LGBTQ and civil rights advocates claim that the push to outlaw trans women from sports is a part of a larger effort to impose restrictions on transgender equality and inclusion in the US.
During a pregame news conference Saturday, reporters asked Dawn Staley, the head coach of the South Carolina Gamecocks women’s basketball team, if she felt trans women should be able to participate in college sports.
“I’m under the opinion of, if you’re a woman, you should play. If you consider yourself a woman and you want to play sports, or vice versa, you should be able to play. That’s my opinion,” Staley said.
When asked if transgender women should be able to play basketball in college, Staley appeared uneasy.
“Yes. Yes,” she said. “So, I’m okay with the barnstormer people flooding my timeline and distracting me on one of our biggest days of, and I’m okay with that. I really am.”
The Gamecocks would go on to win the 2024 NCAA Tournament, earning Staley her third NCAA championship in seven years.
