Trump delivered on his promise to order a ban on trans female athletes. What’s next?
Feb. 7, 2025, 8:55 AM CST
Donald Trump, the candidate, pledged to get “transgender insanity the hell out of our schools” and “keep men out of women’s sports.”
Donald Trump, the president, wasted little time delivering on his promise to address a topic that seemed to resonate across party lines. Trump issued an executive order on the day his second term began that called for “restoring biological truth to the federal government” and signed another on Wednesday titled “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports."
The federal government now has wide latitude across multiple agencies to penalize federally funded entities that “deprive women and girls of fair athletic opportunities.”
“The war on women’s sports is over,” Trump declared.
Probably not. Legal challenges like the ones that have met some of the other executive orders aimed at transgender people are likely.
What is in the executive order?
The biggest takeaway is that the Trump administration has empowered the federal government to take aggressive steps to go after entities — be they a school or an athletic association — that do not comply. Federal funding — and potentially grants to educational programs — could be pulled.
The threshold for noncompliance: Any entity that denies “female students an equal opportunity to participate in sports and athletic events by requiring them, in the women’s category, to compete with or against or to appear unclothed before males.”
The Education Department announced less than 24 hours after the order’s signing that it was investigating San Jose State University, the University of Pennsylvania and the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association, all of which have had Title IX violations reported against them for allowing transgender athletes to compete.
Sex vs. gender : How will that affect Title IX?
Every administration has the authority to issue its own interpretations of the landmark legislation best known for its role in ensuring gender equity in athletics and preventing sexual harassment on campuses.
Given the push-pull of how recent presidencies view Title IX, it has created a whiplash effect.
Joe Biden signed an executive order on his first day in office that interpreted sex as “gender identity” under Title IX, a move that protected transgender athletes from being discriminated against if they wanted to participate in a sport that aligned with their gender identity, not their sex assigned at birth.
Yet it took more than three years for Title IX regulations saying that to be finalized. And when they were, they lacked specifics sports and were put on hold by courts.
Trump’s order explicitly states that sex means the “immutable biological classification as either male or female.” ‘Sex’ is not a synonym for and does not include the concept of “gender identity.” The order adds that “sexes are not changeable and are grounded in fundamental and incontrovertible reality.”
The decision marks a significant shift in the way Title IX is viewed and more explicitly, how it will be enforced.