The Education Department on Tuesday urged organizations overseeing high school and college athletics to strip records, titles and awards from transgender women who competed in women’s sports.
The department sent a letter to the National Collegiate Athletic Association and the National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS) calling on them to “restore to female athletes the records, titles, awards, and recognitions misappropriated by biological males competing in female categories,” according to a news release from the department.
Candice Jackson, deputy general counsel for the Education Department, said women athletes
“have for years been devalued, ignored, and forced to watch men steal their accolades.”
“The Trump Education Department will do everything in our power to right this wrong and champion the hard-earned accomplishments of past, current, and future female collegiate athletes,” Jackson said in a statement.
The department added that “correcting the record” is consistent with the NCAA’s new policy prohibiting trans women from competing in women’s sports.
The NCAA’s policy change came the day after President Donald Trump signed an executive order last week barring trans girls and women from competing in female sports. The order threatens to revoke federal funding from schools that don’t comply. The order does not bar trans boys and men from playing on male sports teams, and the department’s letter to the NCAA and NFHS does not mention reversing awards won by trans men.
The Education Department’s release Tuesday quoted Riley Gaines, a former swimmer for the University of Kentucky who now advocates against including trans women in women’s sports. In 2022, Gaines, a 12-time NCAA All American, tied for fifth with Lia Thomas, a trans woman who swam for the University of Pennsylvania, in the women’s 200-meter NCAA championships. That same year, Thomas became the first trans woman to win an NCAA championship when she won the 500-yard freestyle.
“For the past four years, women have been begging for equal opportunities to compete and succeed, only to be ignored,” Gaines, who attended Trump’s signing of the executive order, stated. “A president who recognizes and celebrates women for our accomplishments is long overdue. Restoring stolen athletic accolades to their rightful owners is a crucial step towards reinstating accountability, integrity, and common sense — one that I wholeheartedly support.”
More than 500,000 student-athletes compete in NCAA championship sports, according to the association. While it’s unclear how many are transgender, NCAA President Charlie Baker told a Senate committee in December that he is aware of fewer than 10.
NFHS reported that more than 8 million students competed in high school sports last year, though the organization does not report how many are trans.
In 2021, when dozens of states considered legislation to restrict trans athletes’ participation in school sports, The Associated Press reached out to more than two dozen state lawmakers sponsoring the measures along with conservative groups supporting them and found that sponsors could not cite a single instance in their own state or region where such participation had caused problems.
Prior to Trump’s trans sports order, more than half of states had enacted measures restricting trans athletes from playing school sports on the teams that align with their gender identities.
Trump’s order is likely to face lawsuits. Courts have blocked state bans in Arizona, Idaho, Utah and West Virginia. New Hampshire’s restriction has been blocked against the two trans plaintiffs who sued, and Montana’s law has been permanently blocked from taking effect in colleges but not K-12 schools, according to the Movement Advancement Project, an LGBTQ think tank.
