The U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee quietly changed its policies on Monday to comply with President Donald Trump’s February executive order preventing transgender athletes from competing in girls’ and women’s sports unless assigned female at birth.
In an update to its Athlete Safety Policy, the USOPC added a paragraph saying that it will “continue to collaborate with various stakeholders with oversight responsibilities, e.g., IOC (International Olympic Committee), IPC (International Paralympic Committee), NGBs (National Governing Bodies), to ensure that women have a fair and safe competition environment consistent with Executive Order 14201.”
In a letter from the USOPC to its stakeholders obtained by The Athletic on Tuesday, USOPC CEO Sarah Hirshland and USOPC President Gene Sykes said that all national governing bodies “are required to update their applicable policies in alignment.”
“The USOPC has engaged in a series of respectful and constructive conversations with federal officials,” Hirshland and Sykes wrote in the letter. “As a federally chartered organization, we have an obligation to comply with federal expectations.”
The new policy is a reversal for the USOPC. In April, Hirshland told The Guardian that the USOPC did not plan to decide eligibility criteria for transgender athletes ahead of the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, and that the responsibility fell to individual governing bodies instead.
“It wouldn’t be appropriate,” Hirshland said in The Guardian. “It’s not our role to take on that position.”
In the past, international governing bodies have taken a variety of approaches to trans athlete eligibility. Many sports have specific requirements around when athletes must have transitioned and for how long, and certain testosterone level requirements in order to compete.
Advocates against the participation of trans athletes in women’s and girls’ sports say that those athletes have an unfair biological advantage, while LGBTQ+ advocates say efforts like those by the Trump Administration are part of a larger push to curtail transgender rights and can be hateful. Studies of trans athletes’ athletic abilities — of which there are few — find mixed results, depending on an athlete’s stage and age of transition.
The National Women’s Law Center, which advocates for “gender justice,” released a statement Tuesday condemning the change by the USOPC.
“By giving into the political demands, the USOPC is sacrificing the needs and safety of its own athletes,” Fatima Goss Graves, president and CEO of the NWLC, said. “The vagueness of the Committee’s policy will leave athletes unprotected from humiliating sex-testing practices. Athletes will now be subject to intrusive questioning and demands for traumatizing physical exams as they prove they are women enough to play.”
The statement also urged the USOPC to work on solving “real and serious disparities harming women athletes,” such as fewer opportunities to participate in sports compared to men, as well as ensuring equal facilities, coaching and equipment.
The USOPC is the latest group to comply with orders by the Trump Administration targeting transgender athletes — a major part of Trump’s campaign for president in 2024 and the Republican platform. On July 1, the University of Pennsylvania banned transgender athletes and revoked records belonging to Lia Thomas, a transgender swimmer, after the Department of Education launched an investigation into the university. The federal government had threatened to cut federal funding or send the case to the Justice Department before Penn complied.
In February, one day after Trump’s executive order, the NCAA updated its policies to exclude transgender women from participating in women’s sports. The order called on rescinding federal funds from programs that “deprive women and girls of fair athletic opportunities.”
Since then, the Department of Education has targeted other bodies, including the state of California, saying that allowing transgender women and girls to compete violates Title IX, the federal law that prohibits discrimination based on sex in education.
Many of the Trump Administration’s orders around transgender athletes have faced legal challenges, as have state-specific bans on transgender athletes. The U.S. Supreme Court plans to hear two cases challenging bans at the state level in its upcoming term, which begins in October.
(Top photo of the Olympics logo at the 2024 Paris Games: Grace Hollars / USA Today Sports via Imagn Images)
