OTHER TRANSGENDER RIGHTS CURBS
Wednesday’s directive follows a series of other Trump executive orders restricting transgender rights, including one attempting to halt all federal support for healthcare that aids in gender transition for people under 19 and another that bans transgender people from serving in the military. Those orders encountered immediate legal challenges.
On his first day in office on Jan 20, Trump signed an order demanding government employees refer only to “sex” and not “gender,” and declaring sex to be an “immutable biological reality” that precludes any change in gender identity.
Trump’s order goes beyond high school and college sports, calling for the US government to deny visas for transgender females seeking to compete in the US.
It will also instruct the State Department to pressure the International Olympic Committee to change its policy, which allows trans athletes to compete under general guidance preventing any athlete from gaining an unfair advantage.
A White House official said the United States will use “all of our authority and our ability” to enforce the order in Olympic events on US soil. The 2028 Summer Olympics are due to be held in Los Angeles.
Wednesday’s executive order will direct the Department of Homeland Security to review visa applications of transgender women to make sure they align with their sex assigned at birth when they enter the US to compete in women’s sports.
“If you are coming into the country and you are claiming that you are a woman, but you are a male here to compete against these women, we’re going to be reviewing that for fraud,” the White House official said.
The debate over transgender inclusion in sports has often centred on fairness, with opponents saying that people who have gone through male puberty have physical advantages. Transgender activists say there is little evidence to show that transgender women have an unfair advantage.
Chris Erchull, a senior staff attorney at the pro-LGBTQ legal group GLAD Law, said the various interscholastic athletics associations and coaches have successfully maintained fairness in sports for years, and banning trans athletes does nothing to ensure fairness or safety.
“We’re talking about a minuscule number of students. What’s more, we’re talking about students who aren’t posing any threat to other girls in school sports, and yet there is this enormous effort to take away their rights,” Erchull said. “It’s, it’s an absurd way to approach those goals.”
Human rights organisation Amnesty International called the ban an attempt to “stigmatise and discriminate against LGBTQ+ people”.
But the order was cheered by Republicans in Congress including US Representative Tim Walberg, who criticized the Biden administration for trying to “unravel decades of progress made by women to appease the most radical fringes of its own base.”
Kelley Robinson, president of the LGBTQ advocacy group Human Rights Campaign, said Trump’s actions would expose children to harassment and discrimination. “For so many students, sports are about finding somewhere to belong. We should want that for all kids – not partisan policies that make life harder for them,” Robinson said in a statement.
