COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (AP) — The U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee has successfully barred transgender ladies from competing in ladies’s sports activities, telling the federations overseeing swimming, athletics and different sports activities it has an “obligation to comply” with an government order issued by President Donald Trump.
The brand new coverage, introduced Monday with a quiet change on the USOPC’s web site and confirmed in a letter despatched to nationwide sport governing our bodies, follows an analogous step taken by the NCAA earlier this 12 months.
The USOPC change is famous obliquely as a element beneath “USOPC Athlete Safety Policy” and references Trump’s government order, “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports,” signed in February. That order, amongst different issues, threatens to “rescind all funds” from organizations that enable transgender athlete participation in ladies’s sports activities.
U.S. Olympic officers informed the nationwide governing our bodies they might want to comply with swimsuit, including that “the USOPC has engaged in a series of respectful and constructive conversations with federal officials” since 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.”
The Nationwide Ladies’s Legislation Heart put out an announcement condemning the transfer.
“By giving into the political demands, the USOPC is sacrificing the needs and safety of its own athletes,” stated that group’s president and CEO, Fatima Goss Graves.
The USOPC oversees round 50 nationwide governing our bodies, most of which play a job in the whole lot from the grassroots to elite ranges of their sports activities. That raises the likelihood that guidelines would possibly must be modified at native sports activities golf equipment to retain their memberships within the NGBs.
A few of these organizations — as an example, USA Observe and Subject — have lengthy adopted tips set by their very own world federation. World Athletics is contemplating modifications to its insurance policies that might largely fall consistent with Trump’s order.
A USA Swimming spokesman stated the federation had been made conscious of the USOPC’s change and was consulting with the committee to determine what modifications it must make. USA Fencing modified its coverage efficient Aug. 1 to permit solely “athletes who are of the female sex” in ladies’s competitors and opening males’s occasions 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 women on women’ and ladies’s sports activities groups has performed out at each the state and federal ranges as Republicans painting the difficulty as a combat for athletic equity. Greater than two dozen states have enacted legal guidelines barring transgender ladies and women from taking part in sure sports activities competitions. Some insurance policies have been blocked in court docket by those that say the insurance policies are discriminatory, merciless and unnecessarily goal a tiny area of interest of athletes.
The NCAA modified its participation coverage for transgender athletes to restrict competitors in ladies’s sports activities to athletes assigned feminine at beginning. That change got here a day after Trump signed the manager order supposed to ban transgender athletes from women’ and ladies’s sports activities.
Feminine eligibility is a key situation for the Worldwide Olympic Committee beneath its new president, Kirsty Coventry, who has signaled an effort to “protect the female category.” The IOC has allowed particular person sports activities federations to set their very own guidelines on the Olympics — and a few have already taken steps on the subject.
Stricter guidelines on transgender athletes — barring from ladies’s occasions anybody who went by means of male puberty — have been handed by swimming, biking and observe and discipline. Soccer is reviewing its eligibility guidelines for girls and will set limits on testosterone.
Trump has stated he needs the IOC to vary the whole lot “having to do with this absolutely ridiculous subject.” Los Angeles will host the Summer time Video games in 2028.
Initially Revealed: July 22, 2025 at 6:12 PM EDT
