The U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee has effectively barred transgender women from competing in women’s sports, telling the federations overseeing swimming, athletics and other sports it has an “obligation to comply” with an executive order issued by President Trump.
The new policy, announced Monday with a quiet change on the USOPC’s website and confirmed in a letter sent to national sport governing bodies, follows a similar step taken by the NCAA earlier this year.
The USOPC change is noted obliquely as a detail under “USOPC Athlete Safety Policy” and references Mr. Trump’s executive order, “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports,” signed in February. That order, among other things, threatens to “rescind all funds” from organizations that allow transgender athlete participation in women’s sports.
U.S. Olympic officials told the national governing bodies they will need to follow suit, adding that “the USOPC has engaged in a series of respectful and constructive conversations with federal officials” since Mr. Trump signed the order.
“As a federally chartered organization, we have an obligation to comply with federal expectations,” USOPC CEO Sarah Hirshland and President Gene Sykes wrote in a letter. “Our revised policy emphasizes the importance of ensuring fair and safe competition environments for women. All National Governing Bodies are required to update their applicable policies in alignment.”
At the 2024 Olympics in Paris, just one openly transgender U.S. athlete competed. Nikki Hiltz, a middle-distance runner from California who uses they/them pronouns, was assigned female at birth. It’s unclear how the change announced by USOPC would impact Hiltz.
At a USOPC meeting in April, Hirshland said that the committee had no plans to define eligibility criteria ahead of the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.
“So typically speaking at an international level, the international federations will define eligibility criteria for the events in which they own jurisdiction, world Cups, world Championships, et cetera, and the national governing bodies domestically would define eligibility criteria for their events,” Hirshland said at the time. “In some cases those may be elite level events, national championships and things. In other cases those may be lower level grassroots youth sport competitions and things of that nature. So we do not have, nor will we have an eligibility policy, it wouldn’t be appropriate, it’s not our role to take on that position.”
The National Women’s Law Center put out a statement condemning the move.
“By giving into the political demands, the USOPC is sacrificing the needs and safety of its own athletes,” said that organization’s president and CEO, Fatima Goss Graves.
The USOPC oversees around 50 national governing bodies, most of which play a role in everything from the grassroots to elite levels of their sports. That raises the possibility that rules might need to be changed at local sports clubs to retain their memberships in the NGBs.
Some of those organizations — for instance, USA Track and Field — have long followed guidelines set by their own world federation. World Athletics is considering changes to its policies that would mostly fall in line with Mr. Trump’s order.
A USA Swimming spokesman said the federation had been made aware of the USOPC’s change and was consulting with the committee to figure out what changes it needs to make. USA Fencing changed its policy effective Aug. 1 to allow only “athletes who are of the female sex” in women’s competition and opening men’s events to “all athletes not eligible for the women’s category, including transgender women, transgender men, non-binary and intersex athletes and cisgender male athletes.”
The nationwide battle over transgender athletes on girls’ and women’s sports teams has played out at both the state and federal levels as Republicans portray the issue as a fight for athletic fairness. More than two dozen states have enacted laws barring transgender women and girls from participating in certain sports competitions. Some policies have been blocked in court by those who say the policies are discriminatory, cruel and unnecessarily target a tiny niche of athletes.
The Supreme Court earlier this month agreed to hear a case over whether states can prohibit transgender athletes from participating in girls’ and women’s sports.
Also earlier this month, the Justice Department filed a civil lawsuit against California’s Department of Education and a nongovernmental sports organization alleging that they violated federal civil rights laws, including Title IX, by implementing policies that “force girls to compete against boys” in state athletic events.
The NCAA changed its participation policy for transgender athletes to limit competition in women’s sports to athletes assigned female at birth. That change came a day after Mr. Trump signed the executive order intended to ban transgender athletes from girls’ and women’s sports.
Earlier this month, the University of Pennsylvania said it would ban transgender women from participating in its women’s sports teams as part of an agreement to resolve Title IX violations. The Trump administration had opened an investigation into the school for allowing Lia Thomas, a transgender swimmer, to compete for its women’s swimming team in 2021 and 2022.
Female eligibility is a key issue for the International Olympic Committee under its new president, Kirsty Coventry, who has signaled an effort to “protect the female category.” The IOC has allowed individual sports federations to set their own rules at the Olympics — and some have already taken steps on the topic.
Stricter rules on transgender athletes — barring from women’s events anyone who went through male puberty — have been passed by swimming, cycling and track and field. Soccer is reviewing its eligibility rules for women and could set limits on testosterone.
Mr. Trump has said he wants the IOC to change everything “having to do with this absolutely ridiculous subject.”
As he took office earlier this year, the president signed an executive order declaring that it is the policy of the federal government to only recognize “two sexes, male and female.” Mr. Trump campaigned on the issue and spent tens of millions of dollars on political ads that focused on transgender rights.