Are transgender athletes allowed in the Olympics? With Paris 2024 soon approaching, many people have been asking that question.
Unfortunately, recent years have seen transgender athletes competing in sporting events face increasingly extreme restrictions.
While transgender athletes are technically allowed in the Olympics, they’re not exactly given a warm welcome given the increasingly demanding requirements placed on them.
Ahead of the Paris 2024 Olympic games, the topic of trans athletes’ participation is once again being raised. The forthcoming Olympic games are set to introduce further restrictions to previous editions.
Can trans athletes compete at the Olympics?
Taking place in Paris this July and August, the 2024 Olympics includes a new requirement that athletes must have completed their transition before the age of 12 to compete.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has suggested that transitioning after the age of 12 could give an advantage to athletes over their cisgender competitors.
There are examples of transgender athletes at the Olympics. At the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, New Zealand weightlifter Laurel Hubbard made history as the first openly trans athlete to compete at the Olympic Games.
Now, athletes like Hubbard who have previously represented their nation at the Olympics will not be eligible for the Paris 2024 Games.
Previously, the IOC had guidelines in place that allowed trans women athletes to compete if their testosterone levels were below 10 nanomoles per litre a year before competing.
Various further bans have also been enacted against trans athletes recently in a number of sporting groups.
Laurel Hubbard speaks to media after competing in the Tokyo Olympic Games (Laurence Griffiths/Getty)
Are there restrictions on trans people in professional sports?
Last March, the governing body of athletics (World Athletics Council) banned women from competing in elite female competitions if they have gone through male puberty.
At the time, World Athletics president Sebastian Coe said the tightening restrictions to exclude transgender women was due to the “overarching need to protect the female category.”
The decision was enacted on 31 March, Transgender Day of Visibility.
Unfortunately, similar attitudes were then adopted by World Aquatics in its ‘Gender Inclusion Policy’.
The governing body voted to bar trans women from competing in women’s swimming events if they had gone through any part of puberty.
Swimmer Lia Thomas has now filed a legal dispute against World Aquatics’ anti-trans policies, citing a number of decisions from the governing body disqualifying most trans women and intersex athletes from international events.
The International Cycling Union (UCI) has also introduced bans on trans women participating if they have reached puberty before transitioning.
Such restrictions are introduced with the attempted justification of ‘safeguarding’ women’s sport. These trans bans have reached every corner of the sporting world: professional golfer Hailey Davidson was pushed into testosterone testing to verify her eligibility after she won a women’s pro tournament in Florida.
Former Las Vegas Raiders star Carl Nassib made history during Pride month in 2021 when he came out as gay.
“I actually hope that, one day, videos like this and the whole coming-out process are just not necessary,” he said in a post on Instagram. “But until then, I’m going to do my best, and my part, to cultivate a culture that’s accepting, that’s compassionate.”
Having also played for the Cleveland Browns and Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Nassib announced his retirement from the NFL last September.
Many people believe that Nassib was the first player to come out, but that’s far from the case. Sure, he was the first to come out while on the sport’s regular season roster, but the title of “first” actually goes to Dave Kopay, who revealed his gay identity 26 years earlier, three years after retiring.
What’s more, in 1969 Kopay was on the same team as two other gay NFL football players, training under the legendary (and open-minded) Washington coach Vince Lombardi. He also played for the San Francisco 49ers, Detroit Lions, New Orleans Saints and the Green Bay Packers.
To date, there have only ever been 16 out gay or bisexual NFL players – hardly any, in the grand scheme of things, especially when you think about the huge number of footballers who have donned a uniform since the NFL was founded in 1920.
There are undoubtedly more players who never came out, but sadly that means their stories are lost in the mists of time.
Thankfully, we do know the incredible, powerful and heart-wrenching stories of three players. Two lost their lives during the Aids crisis, but all of them were truly talented.
These are the stories of running back Dave Kopay, who played between 1964 and 1972, Jerry Smith (1965-77), a tight end with Washington, and Ray McDonald (1967-68), a running back, also for Washington.
Dave Kopay
Dave Kopay was the first professional team sport athlete ever to declare his homosexuality. He made the announcement in 1975, three years after his retirement, following a nine-year NFL career.
He played for five teams during his career: San Francisco, Detroit, Washington, New Orleans and Green Bay. After he came out, he tried to get into coaching, but he claims that NFL and colleges expressed no interest after his sexuality became public knowledge.
Dave Kopay, pictured in 1977 (Getty)
Kopay spent a lot of his younger years denying his sexuality. He joined the Theta Chi fraternity when he arrived at the University of Washington, and it was at the there that he says met the man he now calls the great love of his life. But he was still very much in the closet, and trying to deny who he really was. After all, this was the early 1960s, when declaring he was gay would have essentially ruined his prospects.
Describing that time to the University of Washington Magazine, he said: I was never thinking I was a gay man because I just wasn’t like ‘one of them’. Just talking about it like that almost reinforces the utter bullsh*t that society uses to identify gay folks.
“I didn’t have the knowledge or strength to take it on then, and even after I did take it on, there were many, many times that it almost consumed me and took me into deep depression.”
Letters from fans helped him to find the strength to carry on, the former running back explained.
Kopay is alive and well. He became a Gay Games ambassador, and was a featured announcer in the opening ceremony for Gay Games VII, in Chicago in July 2006.
Jerry Smith
In 1986 Kopay revealed, in his autobiography, a brief affair with fellow NFL star Jerry Smith, who played for Washington (then the Redskins, but now called the Commanders) from 1965 to 1977, playing in a losing Super Bowl team in 1973 – although he didn’t name Smith at the time.
Tight end Smith kept his sexuality very private, focusing on his career. After officially retiring at the end of the 1978 season, he quietly came out as gay to a few family members. He moved to Austin, Texas, where he co-owned a gay bar called The Boathouse.
Jerry Smith kept his sexuality private even after revealing he had Aids. (Getty)
In 1986, Smith revealed that he had contracted AIDS, hoping to bring awareness about the disease and de-stigmatise it – a brave move as, at the time, the prevailing belief was that it was an illness that only affected “drug addicts and hairdressers” as Jim Graham, director of the Whitman-Walker Clinic, put it in an interview with the Washington Post in 1986.
Smith’s teammates all visited him as he lay in a Maryland hospital. He died, aged 43, on October 15, 1986, of an AIDS-related illness, a year after being diagnosed with HIV. Twenty-three players from Washington’s 1973 Super Bowl team reunited for the funeral, with several, including Sonny Jurgensen, Charley Taylor and Bobby Mitchell, serving as pallbearers.
“I don’t know how many of the players even knew he was gay, but I’ll tell you one thing: if they had known, they wouldn’t have cared,” Jurgensen has said.
Ray McDonald
As it turns out, Washington had not one, not two, but three gay men on the roster in 1969. The third was Ray McDonald, who had studied at the University of Idaho.
Questions about McDonald’s sexuality are believed to have started late in his college career, with rumours spreading that he was seeing a man at Washington State University, about 10 minutes from Idaho’s campus.
He went on to be drafted by Washington and during the rookie talent show at a training camp in 1967, McDonald delighted some with his singing skills, while others, it’s said, raised their eyebrows.
Ray McDonald played for Washington for two seasons and once delighted teammates with his singing voice. (University of Idaho)
At the time, Washington was coached by the now-legendary Vince Lombardi, who was no stranger to the LGBTQ+ community: his brother was gay, and many former players say he knew some of his team were gay. Not only did he not have a problem with it, but he also went out of his way to make sure no one else would make it a problem.
“Lombardi wanted to give him every benefit of the doubt and every chance and said if he found out that any coach was challenging McDonald’s manhood, they [would] be fired immediately.”
Former running back A.D. Whitfield, who played for Washington between 1966 and 1969, agreed that McDonald’s sexuality was something of an open secret.
“People more or less knew he was gay,” he said. “In the first year, there were all kinds of stories about incidents around town.”
One of the biggest incidents was when McDonald was reportedly arrested for having sex with another man in public.
It’s tragic that none of these great athletes felt they could come out during their career, but their legacy lives on through players like Carl Nassib.
The National Football League (NFL) will once again host A Night of Pride event during Super Bowl week, leaving bigots up in arms.
The third annual A Night of Pride with GLAAD, presented by Smirnoff, will be held on 7 February ahead of the Super Bowl LVIII in Las Vegas four days later.
It will be an evening of music, cocktails and interview-style conversations with GLAAD, including a panel on how inclusion in sports advances acceptance for LGBTQ people, and will feature a special live performance by singer-songwriter VINCINT.
GLAAD president and chief executive Sarah Kate Ellis said: “[Our] partnership with the NFL is committed to creating spaces where all fans can celebrate, and to growing important visibility for LGBTQ fans at the Super Bowl and all season long.
“The third annual A Night of Pride, at Super Bowl LVIII, will spotlight LGBTQ leaders in sports as we work to create safe and inclusive sports environments for our community.”
The NFL is hosting a Pride event. (Ric Tapia/Getty)
Jonathan Beane, the league’s senior vice-president and chief diversity and inclusion officer, added: “Our third annual Night of Pride with GLAAD is yet another strong step to accelerating acceptance and demonstrating the NFL’s unwavering support of the LGBTQ community.
“We look forward to continuing and strengthening our efforts to ensure football is for everyone.”
News of the event was met by anti-LGBTQ+ fans predictably promising a boycott, with the night being labelled ‘woke’.
“NFL being lost to wokeness,” one anonymous social media user claimed.
Another keyboard warrior wrote: “More like a night of watching something else,” while a third grumbled: “No one will watch or be there.”
However, not all the reaction was negative.
A number of LGBTQ+ fans and allies came out to praise the event and poke fun at those who were outraged by it.
“I hope everyone who goes has a great time and I wish all the homophobes in the comments a miserable day,” one person wrote.
Another said: “As a queer football fan, thank you. This means so much.”
And as a third pointed out: “Human rights isn’t wokeness. If you live your life without having to care about racial or LGBTQ+ equality, then you are privileged. Educate yourselves.”
A fourth, more humorous take, read: “You dudes are so f**king soft, I swear. Ninety per cent of the dudes commenting ‘ew’ can’t even afford the flight ticket to Las Vegas, so just relax.”
This is not the first time LGBTQ+ inclusion in sport has prompted a backlash from homophobes and transphobes.
Last summer, the LA Dodgers faced protests after the baseball team hosted the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence at its Pride event.
The drag collective were invited to appear at the Los Angeles club’s 10th annual Pride Night before officials backtracked on the offer after facing criticism from religious groups – only to U-turn again and reinstate the invite after facing a further backlash from LGBTQ+ fans.
An estimated 150,000 people are expected to travel to Nevada for Super Bowl LVIII, which is the championship game of the NFL’s 2023 season. Last year’s Super Bowl attracted a US TV audience of more than 115 million.
Transgender swimmer Lia Thomas has been quietly mounting a legal battle against World Aquatics to overturn the swimming governing body’s effective ban on most trans women competing in the highest levels of the sport, a lawyer representing Thomas confirmed to NBC News on Friday.
Carlos Sayao, a partner at top Canadian law firm Tyr, said Thomas is asking the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Switzerland to overturn the new World Aquatics rules, issued in June 2022, that prohibit trans women from competing in women’s swimming events unless they transitioned before age 12.
The U.K.’s Telegraph was the first to report on Thomas’ behind-closed-doors legal challenge in an article published Thursday evening. Details of Thomas’ challenge, which The Telegraph reported began in September, were not made public previously because cases brought before the Court of Arbitration for Sport are meant to be kept confidential by all parties involved.
The new rules, which would effectively bar trans women from competing in women’s swimming events at the Olympics, came several months after Thomas, then a student at the University of Pennsylvania, made history by becoming the first openly transgender woman to win an NCAA swimming championship. And in May 2022, Thomas told ABC News’ “Good Morning America” that it’s been a lifelong goal of hers to compete in the Olympics.
Thomas made global headlines for her NCAA win and became the face — and often conservative media’s punching bag — of the worldwide debate over whether trans women should compete in women’s sports.
Lia Thomas competes on March 17, 2022, at the McAuley Aquatic Center in Atlanta. Rich von Biberstein / Icon Sportswire via AP
Sayao confirmed his comments to The Telegraph regarding the rules imposed by World Aquatics, which he called “discriminatory” and said caused “profound harm to trans women.”
“Trans women are particularly vulnerable in society and they suffer from higher rates of violence, abuse and harassment than cis women,” he told the British newspaper.
Sayao declined to comment further.
World Aquatics and the Court of Arbitration for Sport did not immediately return requests for comment.
The family of a transgender volleyball player has added a South Florida school district as a defendant in a federal lawsuit that challenges a 2021 state law banning transgender girls from playing on female sports teams, claiming school officials have placed the family in danger.
Attorneys for the family filed an amended complaint Thursday that adds the Broward School Board, the school district’s superintendent and the Florida High School Athletic Association. The school officials had been named as defendants when the lawsuit was initially filed in 2021 but were dropped the next year, leaving just the Florida Department of Education and Education Commissioner Manny Diaz as defendants.
“While we can’t comment on pending litigation, Broward County Public Schools remains committed to following all state laws,” district spokesman John J. Sullivan said in a statement. “The District assures the community of its dedication to the welfare of all its students and staff.”
U.S. District Judge Roy Altman, a Trump appointee, ruled in November that state officials had a right to enforce a 2021 law that bars transgender girls and women from playing on public school teams intended for student athletes identified as female at birth but allowed the family to file an amended complaint.
The law, which supporters named “The Fairness in Women’s Sports Act,” was championed and signed in by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is running for president and has leaned heavily into cultural divides on race, sexual orientation and gender.
The transgender student, a Monarch High School 10th grader who played in 33 matches over the past two seasons, was removed from the team in November after the Broward County School District was notified by an anonymous tipster about her participation.
According to the lawsuit, the student has identified as female since before elementary school and has been using a girl’s name since second grade. At age 11 she began taking testosterone blockers and at 13 started taking estrogen to begin puberty as a girl. Her gender has also been changed on her birth certificate.
The girl’s removal from the volleyball team led hundreds of Monarch students to walk out of class in protest. At the same time, Broward Superintendent Peter Licata suspended or temporarily reassigned five school officials pending an investigation, including the girl’s mother, an information technician at the school.
The Associated Press is not naming the student to protect her privacy.
The initial lawsuit didn’t identify the student or her school, but the amended complaint said the family lost all privacy when the school district began its investigation. The student’s mother issued a statement at the time calling the outing of her daughter a “direct attempt to endanger” the girl.
The Human Rights Campaign, an LGBTQ+ rights organization, has been supporting the family.
“The reckless indifference to the well-being of our client and her family, and all transgender students across the State, will not be ignored,” the group’s litigation strategist, Jason Starr, said in a statement last month.
The International Cricket Council has imposed a ban on transgender players from international women’s cricket if the player has gone through male puberty.
The elite council, in a statement, said it has decided after an extensive scientific review and a 9-month consultation, to “protect the integrity of the international women’s cricket matches, safety, fairness and inclusion.”
“The new policy is based on the following principles (in order of priority), protection of the integrity of the women’s game, safety, fairness and inclusion, and this means any male to female participants who have been through any form of male puberty will not be eligible to participate in the international women’s game regardless of any surgery or gender reassignment treatment they may have undertaken,” reads the ICC statement. “The review, which was led by the ICC Medical Advisory Committee chaired by Dr. Peter Harcourt, relates solely to gender eligibility for international women’s cricket, whilst gender eligibility at domestic level is a matter for each individual Member Board, which may be impacted by local legislation. The regulations will be reviewed within two years.”
Cricket is one of the biggest sports in India, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Sri Lanka with a fan base of 2.5 billion people around the world.
The ICC started the first women’s World Cup in 1973. The Board of Control for Cricket in India is the richest cricket board in the world, worth $2.25 billion. The BCCI in 2023 alone made $3.77 billion from the inaugural season of the Women’s Premier League. A huge population of trans people lives in India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and other major countries that participate in international cricket matches, but the new policy change has created a blowback for the community.
Danielle McGahey, a trans cricketer from Australia, confirmed after the ban came into effect that her career as a cricketer is over.
“Following the ICC’s decision, it is with a very heavy heart that I must say that my international cricketing career is over. As quickly as it begun, it must now end,” said McGahey on her Instagram page. “While I hold my opinions on the ICC’s decision, they are irrelevant. What matters is the message being sent to millions of trans women today, a messaging say that we don’t belong.”
McGahey also said that she will not stop fighting for equality in sports.
She is the first transgender woman cricketer to take part in an official international match when she represented Canada in a T20 match against Brazil. She previously played for men’s club cricket in Melbourne before moving to Canada in 2020.
Although the ban has shattered many hopes and dreams, the ICC statement confirms each country can decide eligibility for trans cricketers in domestic games.
The Washington Blade reached out to India’s BCCI for reaction and response on the future of trans cricketers in India, but the board did not immediately respond.
The Blade also reached out to the Australian Cricket Board and South African Cricket Board but did not receive a comment. The Blade sought comment from Sports Minister Anurag Thakur and MP Rajiv Shukla, a former IPL chair, but both declined to respond.
“It is very unfortunate, and I am really disappointed with the decision of ICC, which is excluding transgender people because when we talk about human rights or legal rights, transgender people deserve to be in all parts of the society,” said Kalki Subramaniam, a trans activist, queer artist and motivational speaker based in India. “Especially in sports trans people deserve to play. It is a huge disappointment for us to know that ICC has banned transgender people. There is no need to do that and ICC should review their policy. While Indian army is considering (whether) to recruit transgender people, why would the ICC do the opposite.”
Kalki told the Blade the ICC statement does not justify the exclusion, especially trans women as it excludes trans women as categorized as women.
While talking to the Blade, Nilufer, a trans activist who represents the Mumbai-based Humsafar Trust, said there is constant discrimination happening in sports not only in India but around the world in athletics against trans women. She also said the ICC ban is discriminatory against the community, not only for trans Indian cricketers but for the entire world.
Ankush Kumar is a reporter who has covered many stories for Washington and Los Angeles Blades from Iran, India and Singapore. He recently reported for the Daily Beast. He can be reached at mohitk@opiniondaily.news. He is on Twitter at @mohitkopinion.
New Zealand weightlifter Laurel Hubbard’s appearance at the 2020 Tokyo Games as the first openly transgender woman to compete at the Olympics received mixed reviews in one of the most contentious areas in sport.
In the end, Hubbard retired after an inauspicious performance in Tokyo where she failed to record a valid lift.
Fast forward to 2023 and she would find herself ineligible for next year’s Paris Games after the International Weightlifting Federation tightened its eligibility rules.
Heading into 2024, there has been a seismic shift in the sporting landscape for trans athletes with the pendulum swinging back towards tighter measures on a divisive issue that has virtually no grey area.
In March, World Athletics banned transgender women who had gone through male puberty from elite female competitions — a decision federation president Sebastian Coe said was based “on the overarching need to protect the female category.”
The International Cycling Union (UCI) in July banned trans women who had gone through male puberty from competing in the female category of competitive events. Athletes who do not qualify can enter the newly named “men/open” category.
The UCI’s new rules came two months after British Cycling’s similar ban on trans women.
Hubbard, French sprinter Halba Diouf and Welsh cyclist Emily Bridges could previously compete in the women’s category because they met testosterone level requirements.
“The only safeguard transgender women have is their right to live as they wish and we are being refused that, we are being hounded,” Diouf told Reuters after World Athletics tightened their rules.
Anti-trans activists argue that the participation of trans women is the biggest threat to women’s sport, with much of their anger targeted at high-profile athletes such as swimmer Lia Thomas, the first openly trans athlete to win an NCAA Division 1 U.S. national college title.
Thomas, who won the women’s 500-yard freestyle at the 2022 championships, cannot compete in the women’s category at the Paris Olympics due to World Aquatics’ new rules.
Canada’s soccer midfielder Quinn — whose case differs from Hubbard and Thomas in that Quinn was assigned female at birth — became the first ever openly transgender and nonbinary gold medallist at the Tokyo Olympics.
The inclusion of trans women has prompted some of the world’s greatest athletes to take sides.
Megan Rapinoe, who recently retired from the U.S. women’s soccer team, said she would welcome a trans player on the squad.
“We as a country are trying to legislate away people’s full humanity,” Rapinoe told Time Magazine. “It’s particularly frustrating when women’s sports is weaponized. Oh, now we care about fairness? Now we care about women’s sports?”
Her comments raised the ire of tennis great Martina Navratilova, a trailblazer for gay rights, who tweeted a one-word response: “Yikes…”
Rapinoe and her partner, retired WNBA star Sue Bird, were among 40 professional athletes who signed a letter to U.S. lawmakers in April opposing a federal bill that stipulates Title IX compliance requires banning transgender athletes from playing women’s and girl’s sport.
Title IX is a 1970s civil rights law which bars discrimination based on sex.
“Certainly the pendulum is swinging back in a negative way,” Joanna Harper, a Canadian-born transgender woman and author, told Reuters in July. “There’s little doubt of that.”
The National Hockey League banned players from wearing themed jerseysduring warm-ups, but they didn’t say anything about wearing them before warm-ups.
That’s the loophole that the New Jersey Devils are exploiting as the organization marks its LGBTQ+ Pride night on Thursday. The team announced ahead of their game against the Edmonton Oilers that the specially-designed jerseys would be “worn during player arrivals,” in an apparent bypass of the league’s new policies.
NHL teams added LGBTQ+ Pride to their seasonal theme nights in recent years, which also include events such as Black History, military appreciation, and Hockey Fights Cancer. On these nights, players would wear jerseys corresponding with the theme while they warmed up, which would later be auctioned off with the proceeds going to related charities.
Just seven players refused to wear pride jerseys last year, citing their own personal beliefs. Some teams responded to the PR backlash by taking the choice away from players and removing Pride jerseys entirely. NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman and the league’s Board of Governors decided to nix themed jerseys entirely at the end of the 2022-2023 season, with Bettman calling them a “distraction.”
NHL players are now forbidden from wearing themed gear during warm-ups, with players who break the rules getting threatened with fines. No player so far has actually been penalized for disobeying the policy, including Travis Dermott, who donned rainbow Pride tape before the league reversed its ban on that specific item.
Proceeds for the Devils’ Pride jersey auction will go to Hyacinth, New Jersey’s largest and first HIV/AIDs service provider. The jersey was designed by local artist, Kathryn Kennedy of Kearny, New Jersey, who said that the abstract style represents “coming out” within the LGBTQ+ community.
“These theme nights let people who are a part of their respective communities know that they’re seen, heard, and welcome,” she said in a statement. “It’s a huge honor to be involved with the Devils’ Pride Night, and my hope is that I’ve created something that helps others feel accepted and appreciated.”
Cricket Australia has confirmed that it has no plans to bow to anti-trans rhetoric and exclude transgender athletes from competing in the division that aligns with their gender.
Following in the footsteps of other global sports federations like the International Swimming Federation, World Rugby, World Athletics, and World Cycling, the ICC announced last month that any athlete who had been through male puberty would not be permitted to compete in the international women’s game.
Cricket Australia will remain inclusive to trans athletes, despite the ICC’s new policy. (Paul Kane – CA/Cricket Australia via Getty Images/Getty Images)
The decision was yet another blow to the few transgender athletes who have repeatedly been blocked from competing in their sport from community to elite levels.
In response to the ICC’s policy change, Cricket Australia has now pledged to keep domestic competitions inclusive of trans athletes.
Speaking to Sydney’s Daily Telegraph, Hockley said: “We were really proud in 2019 to put out a leading set of transgender guidelines, both for the community and for elite cricket, and they were based absolutely on the philosophy of inclusion.
“The ICC guidelines go a bit further in terms of it takes quite a scientific approach. We’ve expressed that we think that inclusion is the priority, so we will continue to work with the ICC to express our views.”
Cricket Australia’s transgender guidelines state that transgender women may compete in elite-level domestic women’s competitions if they have maintained testosterone levels of less than 10 nanograms per deciliter for 12 months before being nominated for a team.
Meanwhile, community-level women’s competitions are even more inclusive, and simply require transgender athletes wishing to compete to demonstrate a “commitment that their gender identity is consistent with a gender identity in other aspects of everyday life.”
Hockley noted that, for now, there are no transgender cricketers in Australia hoping to play at an international level, so the ICC’s decision has no direct impact on Australian Cricket.
But that won’t stop Cricket Australia from pushing for more inclusive policies from the ICC.
“I think we need to be really inclusive and we also need to be very mindful of player wellbeing and mental health considerations as well,” he said.
Although Hockley suggests that the ICC’s policy change was based more in science than in inclusivity, there is little-to-no scientific evidence to back up their stance.
That’s despite a lack of scientific evidence to support the claim that transgender women would have an athletic advantage over cisgender women.
For example, a 2023 report from the Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport determined that, if existing rules are followed, trans women who have begun testosterone suppression do not have any biomedical advantage over cisgender women in elite sport.
The report also found “strong evidence” that “elite sport policy is made within transmisogynist, misogynoir, racist, geopolitical cultural norms”.
Similarly, a 2017 study from Sports Medicine concluded that there was “no direct or consistent research suggesting transgender female individuals have an athletic advantage at any stage of transition, and therefore, competitive sports politics that place restrictions on transgender people need to be considered and potentially revised.”
Opponents of Connecticut’s policy letting transgender girls compete in girls high school sports will get a second chance to challenge it in court, an appeals court ruled Friday, which revived the case without weighing in on its merits.
Both sides called it a win. The American Civil Liberties Union said it welcomes a chance to defend the rights of the two transgender high school track runners it represents. The Alliance Defending Freedom, which represented the four cisgender athletes who brought the lawsuit, also said it looks forward to seeking a ruling on the case’s merits.
In a rare full meeting of all active judges on the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan, judges found the cisgender runners have standing to sue and have described injuries that might qualify for monetary damages. The runners also seek to alter certain athletic records, alleging they were deprived of honors and opportunities at elite track-and-field events because they say “male athletes” were permitted to compete against them.
The case had been dismissed by a Connecticut judge in 2021, and that decision was affirmed by three-judge panel of the 2nd Circuit a year ago.
At least 20 states have approved a version of a blanket ban on transgender athletes playing on K-12 and collegiate sports teams statewide, but a Biden administration proposal to forbid such outright bans is set to be finalized by March after two delays and much pushback. As proposed, the rule announced in April would establish that blanket bans would violate Title IX, the landmark gender-equity legislation enacted in 1972.
Under the proposal, it would be much more difficult for schools to ban, for example, a transgender girl in elementary school from playing on a girls basketball team. But it would also leave room for schools to develop policies that prohibit trans athletes from playing on more competitive teams if those policies are designed to ensure fairness or prevent sports-related injuries.
In a statement Friday, the American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU Foundation of Connecticut cast the ruling as a victory for the two runners they represent — Andraya Yearwood and Terry Miller — noting that the 2nd Circuit wrote that the transgender runners have an “ongoing interest in litigating against any alteration of their public athletic records.”
Roger Brooks, a lawyer for the Alliance Defending Freedom, said the decision was a victory “not only for the women who have been deprived of medals, potential scholarships, and other athletic opportunities, but for all female athletes across the country.”
In 2020, the Alliance sued on behalf of four athletes — Selina Soule, Chelsea Mitchell, Alanna Smith, and Ashley Nicoletti — over a Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference policy that allows transgender girls to compete in girls’ athletic events.
Three of 15 judges who heard arguments earlier this year fully dissented on Friday, while five other judges dissented to portions of the majority ruling.
In a dissent to the majority ruling, Circuit Judge Denny Chin noted that three of the cisgender athletes alleged that only one track event in their high school careers were affected by the participation of transgender athletes while a fourth athlete alleged that four championship races were affected.
In a footnote, Chin wrote that all four plaintiffs currently compete on collegiate track-and-field teams, some after being awarded scholarships, while neither of the transgender athletes who intervened in the case have competed since high school.
And he pointed out that no one was able to cite any precedent in which a sports governing body retroactively stripped an athlete of accomplishments when the athlete complied with all existing rules and did not cheat or take an illegal substance.
“It is not the business of the federal courts to grant such relief,” Chin said.
