President Trump, surrounded by dozens of young, female, athletes, signs an executive order on Feb. 5, 2025, declaring that biological males can not participate in women's sports. (Credit: YouTube)
That didn't take long.
One day after President Trump signed an executive order barring biological makes from participating in women's sports, in effect, preventing transgender athletes from participation with the gender they identify with, the NCAA responded in kind with a change in it's policy, reverting back to language that existed prior to 2010.
The NCAA announced it's new policy on Thursday, which now reads, "A student-athlete assigned male at birth may not compete on a women's team."
This replaced a policy that the NCAA put in place 15 years ago that allowed for biological males to participate in women's sports as long as they had had testosterone suppression treatment for at least one year.
HAPPENING NOW🚨: The NCAA has recently updated its policy on transgender athletes, effectively barring individuals assigned male at birth from participating in women's sports.
President Trump has fulfilled another of his key campaign commitments with this change. pic.twitter.com/AHp72vDI3k
— Officer Lew (@officer_Lew) February 6, 2025
This also comes on the heels of a lawsuit being filed against the NCAA, as well as the Ivy League and two Ivy League universities - Harvard and UPenn - by three former members of the Penn women's swimming team citing emotional trauma based on the way they were treated by the university when they challenged the acceptance of transgender swimmer Lia Thomas on their team from 2019 through 2022.
The lawsuit also seeks to have all of Thomas' university, pool, and league records vacated because of Title IX violations.
Trump's Department of Education (DOE) opened investigations into two schools - UPenn and San Jose State University - as well as the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association (MIAA) for potential Title IX violations.
Penn's was related to Thomas. San Jose State was the result of including a transgender player on the women's volleyball team. Several Mountain West opponents forfeited against San Jose State during the 2024-25 season out of protest against the player - Blaire Fleming - including during the postseason tournament, allowing San Jose State to reach the conference finals before losing.
The MIAA incident occurred in February, 2024 when a transgender player for KIPP Academy Lynn girl's basketball team caused injuries to players on their opponent, Collegiate Charter School of Lowell. Collegiate Charter forfeited the game at halftime out of safety concerns for their remaining players.
In a statement released by the NCAA on Thursday, association President Charlie Baker said the new policy provided a "clear, national standard," and that the NCAA "strongly believe(s) 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."
A recent survey conducted by the New York Times/Ipsos found that 79% of Americans agree that biological males should not be allowed to participate in women's sports.
The same survey asked for political affiliation and of the 48.2% who identified themselves as Democrats or leaning democrat, two-thirds (67%) agreed that transgender athletes should not compete with women.
The new NCAA policy does not change the ability for women to compete in men's sports.
