President Donald Trump signed an executive order Wednesday directing federal agencies to rescind funding for educational programs that allow transgender women and girls to participate in school-sponsored women’s sports.
The “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports” order requires all executive departments and agencies to review grants for educational programs and revoke funding if they fail to comply. The order also called on representatives of major athletic organizations, governing bodies and female athletes “harmed by such policies” to convene within 60 days of the order to “promote policies that are fair and safe [and] in the best interests of female athletes.”
Allowing transgender women and girls to compete in women’s sports is “demeaning, unfair, and dangerous to women and girls, and denies women and girls the equal opportunity to participate and excel in competitive sports,” the order read.
National Collegiate Athletic Association president Charlie Baker told the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee in December that there are fewer than 10 transgender collegiate athletes out of 510,000 total NCAA athletes.
“As the federal landscape evolves, we are committed to providing information about executive orders, memorandums and guidance that may affect our work and community at [this university],” this university wrote in a statement to The Diamondback.
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Wednesday’s order is built on the legal framework of the 1972 Title IX of the Education Amendments Act — a law that prohibits sex-based discrimination in educational programs that receive federal funding. Refusing to comply with this executive order would risk parties violating Title IX, according to the order, after one of Trump’s previous executive orders defined a person’s gender as the sex they were assigned at birth.
Wednesday’s order is the latest in Trump’s executive actions targeting transgender people, which also includes defunding gender-affirming medical care for transgender youth, attempting to move transgender women to men’s prisons and banning transgender service members.
Trump’s executive order on Jan. 20 also stopped all requests to change gender markers on government-issued documents, such as passports and visas, and no longer recognizes the “X” gender marker.
“This common-sense action from President Trump ends the disgusting betrayal of women and girls by the previous administration,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a press briefing Wednesday. “Gender ideology insanity is over.”
This story has been updated.
