A group of over 400 current and former Olympic, professional, and collegiate athletes, over 300 academics, and about 100 advocacy groups issued separate letters to the NCAA on Tuesday urging it not to prohibit transgender women from participation in women’s college sports.
Former US Women’s National Team soccer co-captain Megan Rapinoe, former WNBA and Olympic basketball player Sue Bird, and former NFL defensive end R.K. Russell signed the letters, coordinated by Athlete Ally, an LGBTQ sports advocacy group.
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“We call on you to be on the right side of history and affirm that sport is truly for us all,” the athletes’ letter states. “Do not ban transgender women from NCAA women’s sports.”
In a separate statement, Rapinoe, possibly the most prominent athlete to sign, stated that “bans against trans athletes framed as ‘protecting women’s sports’ do not speak for us and do nothing to protect us.”
“The time has come for the NCAA and the national athletic community to speak out and affirm that sports should be for everyone, including transgender athletes,” Rapinoe said in a statement posted by Athlete Ally.
When asked about the letters, the NCAA responded in a statement that “college sports are the premier stage for women’s sports in America, and the NCAA will continue to promote Title IX, make unprecedented investments in women’s sports, and ensure fair competition for all student-athletes in all NCAA championships.”
Since 2010, the NCAA has allowed transgender women to compete on women’s sports teams, subject to specific requirements. In 2022, the association unveiled a new sport-by-sport strategy. The current criteria, like the 2010 recommendations, require transgender women to undergo at least one year of testosterone suppression, but the new rules leave most of the specifics to the national governing body for each activity.
The new restrictions sparked a media storm that began with University of Pennsylvania transgender swimmer Lia Thomas’ winning streak in the 2021–2022 season.
Tuesday’s letters are part of a larger and highly heated debate about transgender sports participation. A recent Gallup poll reveals that 69% of Americans advocate for allowing transgender athletes to compete on sports teams solely based on their birth gender.
The NCAA, the largest college athletics group with roughly 1,100 member schools, has played a key role in this argument.
Last month, more than a dozen collegiate swimmers and volleyball players sued the NCAA, claiming that the organization violated their Title IX rights by permitting Thomas to compete in the 2022 national women’s swimming championships.
Riley Gaines, a former University of Kentucky swimmer who was one of the plaintiffs in last month’s lawsuit and mentioned in two of the letters to the NCAA, tied Thomas for fifth place in the women’s 200-yard freestyle race at a 2022 NCAA championship meet and has since become a vocal opponent of transgender inclusion in women’s sports.
When asked about the letters on Tuesday, Gaines slammed the NCAA’s regulations on trans players’ participation, calling them “discriminatory.”
“Allowing even a single male athlete to compete in women’s sports takes numerous opportunities away from females,” Gaines wrote in a follow-up email. “The female athletes governed by NCAA policies do not accept this.”
The letter referenced Thomas’ victories as well as a decision earlier this month by a smaller sports regulatory body, the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics, or NAIA, to restrict trans women from competing in women’s sports at its approximately 250 member universities.
“We urge the NCAA to reconsider its current policy that allows biological males to deprive women of a fair opportunity to compete and achieve athletic success,” the letter states. “All women in NCAA-affiliated schools should not fear having their athletic accomplishments minimized by biological males.”
Conservative MPs from across the country have also weighed in on the subject. According to the LGBTQ think tank Movement Advancement Project, two dozen states currently prohibit transgender adolescents from participating in school sports that reflect their gender identity. According to MAP, injunctions have temporarily blocked some of this legislation, including those in Arizona, Idaho, and Utah.
The Biden administration announced a revised Title IX regulation on Friday, which clarifies that federal civil rights law from 1972 prohibits anti-LGBTQ discrimination in schools. However, the revised rule specifically excludes a new guideline prohibiting schools from adopting blanket bans on transgender athletes, which The Associated Press reports the administration had planned to include.
