By: Brittany Bernstein – nationalreview.com – February 6, 2025

The policy does allow men to practice with women’s teams.

The NCAA reformed its policy on transgender-identifying athlete participation on Thursday, limiting participation in women’s divisions to female athletes.

The policy allows men to practice with women’s teams and to receive “benefits such as medical care” while practicing, according to a press release from the NCAA, which is the governing body of college sports. The new policy also prohibits female athletes who are taking hormone therapy like testosterone to gender transition from competing in women’s sports, though they may still practice with women’s teams.

“The NCAA is an organization made up of 1,100 colleges and universities in all 50 states that collectively enroll more than 530,000 student-athletes. 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. To that end, President Trump’s order provides a clear, national standard,” NCAA President Charlie Baker said.

Trump issued an executive order on Wednesday barring men from women’s sports through Title IX, which prohibits sex-based discrimination in the allocation of federal funds.

The order, which was issued on National Girls and Women in Sports Day, directs federal agencies to withhold funding from universities that allow male athletes to participate in women’s competition.

“My administration will not stand by and watch men beat and batter female athletes. We’re just not going to let it happen,” Trump said.

The order also allows women who are forced to compete against men to sue their schools and directs the Department of Homeland Security to deny visa applications from foreign athletes who identify themselves as the opposite sex in order to compete in the U.S.

Several former female athletes were present for the signing of the order, including former University of Kentucky swimmer Riley Gaines, who tied male University of Pennsylvania swimmer Lia Thomas for fifth place in the 2022 NCAA women’s championships 200-yard freestyle competition. Meanwhile, Payton McNabb was seriously injured when a male high school volleyball player spiked a ball into her face.

The NCAA’s previous policy allowed men to compete in the women’s category after having undergone at least one year of testosterone suppression treatment.

That policy led to several lawsuits from student athletes against the NCAA and colleges and universities. A lawsuit filed by Gaines and several other female athletes who have been affected by the previous policy is currently winding its way through the courts.

In June, Thomas, the transgender UPenn swimmer, lost his challenge to an international swimming rule that prevents biological males from competing in female events.

The Court of Arbitration for Sport based in Switzerland said Thomas did not have standing to bring the suit against World Aquatics, an international swimming federation, because Thomas is not eligible to compete in “elite events” hosted by USA Swimming or World Aquatics.

The federation celebrated the ruling as a “major step forward in our efforts to protect women’s sport.”

The tide has turned on the issue in recent months after the Democrats faced a massive electoral loss in November, which many pundits have attributed to the party having failed to acknowledge voters’ concern on cultural issues like transgenderism and fairness in women’s sports.

Democratic Representative Seth Moulton of Massachusetts even argued that allowing men to play in women’s sports endangers girls and jeopardizes their athletic opportunities.

“Democrats spend way too much time trying not to offend anyone rather than being brutally honest about the challenges many Americans face,” Moulton told the New York Times. “I have two little girls, I don’t want them getting run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete, but as a Democrat I’m supposed to be afraid to say that.”

However, Moulton later opposed a bill that would prohibit men from competing in women’s school sports after he received backlash from Democrats in Massachusetts, who vowed to find a primary challenger to defeat him over his comments.

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Source: NCAA Bars Men from Competing in Women’s Sports | National Review