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Donald Trump signed an executive order on Wednesday banning transgender athletes from participating in women’s sports, the latest in a slew of moves rolling back the rights of trans people.
The order establishes stricter mandates on sports and gender policy, directing federal agencies, including the Department of Justice, to interpret federal Title IX rules as the prohibition of transgender girls and women from participating in any female sports categories.
The order is titled “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports”.
The order, which mandates immediate enforcement, directs state attorneys general to identify best practices for enforcement.
“With this executive order, the war on women’s sports is over,” Trump said on Wednesday. The timing of the order coincided with National Girls and Women in Sports Day.
The order, which is likely to face legal challenges, calls for “immediate enforcement” nationwide. It threatens to cut off federal funding for any school that allows trans women or girls to compete in female-designated sporting competitions.
The order would affect only a small number of athletes. The president of the National Collegiate Athletics Association told a Senate panel in December he was aware of fewer than 10 trans athletes among the 520,000 competing at 1,100 member schools.
Athlete Ally, a non-profit athletic advocacy group, released a statement in response to the order, saying: “Our hearts break for the trans youth who will no longer be able to know the joy of playing sports as their full and authentic selves.
“We’ve known this day was likely to occur for a long time, as this administration continues to pursue simple solutions to complex issues, often resulting in animus towards the most marginalized communities in our country.”
This latest attack on trans rights follows a sequence of controversial mandates by the Trump administration. During his first day in office, Trump signed an order calling for the federal government to define sex as “only male or female” based on reproductive cells and for it to be reflected on all official documents such as passports.
Last week, he signed an executive order prohibiting gender transition for people under the age of 19. It included gender-affirming care, such as puberty blockers, the use of hormones such as estrogen or testosterone, and surgical procedures.
Trump has also taken aim at Biden’s orders to combat gender discrimination. Last month, Trump signed an order called “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government” that instructs the federal government to remove “all radical gender ideology guidance, communication, policies, and forms”.
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The White House expects all sports bodies such as the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) to change their rules in accordance with the latest order.
“We’re a national governing body and we follow federal law,” the NCAA president, Charlie Baker, told Republican senators at a hearing in December. “Clarity on this issue at the federal level would be very helpful.”
The trans community has already seen the effects of the barrage of attacks on their rights. Following Trump’s orders, several hospitals across the US stopped providing care for transgender youth.
Prisons have likewise isolated transgender women in custody, telling them that they will be transferred to men’s prisons after losing access to gender-affirming medical treatments.
Olivia Hunt, of the group Advocates for Trans Equality, told Britain’s Sky News: “For the past two weeks the trans community across the United States has seen unending attacks from this administration on all aspects of our rights and daily lives. And seeing this attack, like the others, knowing it’s going to be very long on hostile rhetoric and inflammatory language and very short on clear, actionable policies, it’s always very concerning … especially when it’s targeted at a relatively small and already marginalized community across the country.”
The Associated Press contributed reporting
