Updated Feb. 7, 2025:
The NCAA has formally barred transgender athletes from competing in women’s sports but will allow them to practice with women’s teams. The organization’s decision falls in line with President Donald Trump’s executive order, “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports,” that threatens to withhold federal funding from institutions that allow athletes assigned male at birth to play in women’s events.
The following article is a part of University Business’ ongoing coverage of President Donald J. Trump’s impact on higher education during his second term in office. Click here for the latest updates.
“This national standard brings much needed clarity as we modernize college sports for today’s student-athletes,” NCAA President Charlie Baker said in a statement.
The new NCAA policy makes the following distinction:
- Competition. A student-athlete assigned male at birth may not compete on a women’s team.
- Practice. A student-athlete assigned male at birth may practice on the team consistent with their gender identity and receive all other benefits applicable to student-athletes who are otherwise eligible for practice.
The rule also states that a student-athlete assigned female at birth who has begun hormone therapy with testosterone cannot compete on a women’s team.
Feb. 6, 2025:
Transgender athletes: NCAA sees “clear standard” in new restrictions
NCAA officials are preparing to comply with President Donald Trump’s newly ordered restrictions on transgender athletes in women’s college sports.
In Trump’s latest step to reshape higher education, he signed an executive order called “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports.” The new rule would halt funding to educational programs that “deprive women and girls of fair athletic opportunities, which results in the endangerment, humiliation, and silencing of women and girls and deprives them of privacy.”
U.S. policy now opposes biological males competing in women’s sports “as a matter of safety, fairness, dignity and truth,” Trump asserted.
More from UB: Trump now ready to dismantle Department of Education
“With my action this afternoon, we are putting every school receiving taxpayer dollars on notice that if you let men take over women’s sports teams or invade your locker rooms, you will be investigated for Title IX and risk your federal funding,” he said.
The NCAA is now taking steps to adopt the new policy, the organization’s president, Charlie Baker, said. “We strongly believe that clear, consistent and uniform eligibility standards would best serve today’s student-athletes instead of a patchwork of conflicting state laws and court decisions,” Baker posted. “To that end, President Trump’s order provides a clear, national standard.”
The U.S. Department of Education—the very existence of which has been called into question by Trump—said it will prioritize Title IX enforcement on behalf of female athletes. “President Trump demanded an end to the insanity of men in women’s sports,” U.S. Department of Education Deputy General Counsel Candice Jackson said in a statement. “The president affirmed that this administration will protect female athletes from the danger of competing against and the indignity of sharing private spaces with someone of the opposite sex.”
Earlier this week, multiple reports warned that President Donald Trump is preparing an executive order to impose severe cutbacks on the U.S. Department of Education and eventually shut the agency down.
Meanwhile, educational institutions will now revert to the Title IX regulations first issued during President Donald Trump’s first presidency, the U.S. Department of Education wrote in a “Dear Colleague” letter. The department is now enforcing protections based on biological sex in K12 schools and higher education institutions. Trump’s 2020 ruling also ensures that free speech is protected on campus and allows for stronger due process protections for students during Title IX sexual misconduct proceedings.
The Department of Education has launched an investigation of anti-Semitism at five universities following student protests that erupted across college campuses following the events of Oct. 7, 2023, according to a press release. The Department’s civil rights office opened claims against Columbia University; Northwestern University; Portland State University; the University of California, Berkeley; and the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities.
