The NCAA, the governing body for US collegiate sports, has issued a new policy that limits competition in women’s sports to only student-athletes assigned female at birth.
Announced on Thursday, the National Collegiate Athletic Association said its policy applied to all athletes and was effective immediately.
The policy change came the day after President Donald Trump signed an executive order preventing transgender women from competing in female categories of sports.
NCAA President Charlie Baker said the change would provide “clear, consistent, and uniform eligibility standards” under Trump’s new order, “instead of a patchwork of conflicting state laws and court decisions”.
The NCAA is made up of 1,100 colleges and universities in all 50 states that collectively enrol more than 530,000 student-athletes.
Mr Baker told a Senate committee in December that there were “less than 10” transgender athletes in the NCAA.
The new policy does permit student-athletes assigned male at birth to practice with women’s teams and receive benefits like medical care, but they are not allowed to compete.
Under Trump’s executive order, the education department has been directed to investigate schools for non-compliance.
Those found in violation could potentially be violating Title IX, the federal law that bans sex discrimination in schools.
“From now on, women’s sports will be only for women,” Trump said after signing the order on Wednesday.
Supporters of the order say it restores fairness to sports but LGBT advocacy and human rights organisations have described the move as discriminatory.
On Thursday, the education department announced an investigation into three schools “for suspected Title IX violations”.
Two colleges are suspected of allowing transgender athletes to compete in women’s sports after having been notified of Title IX changes – San Jose State University, the University of Pennsylvania, and the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association.
The NCAA’s eligibility policy for transgender athletes was last updated by the Board of Governors in January 2022.
That policy was described as a “sport-by-sport approach” aligning transgender student-athlete participation with the policies of the United States Olympic Paralympic Committee and International Olympic Committee.
Responding to the NCAA’s announcement, Republican Congressman Andy Ogle lauded the move, saying on X: “No more biological men in women’s sports.”
Nancy Armour, a sports columnist with USA Today, said the sports body “has lost its common sense, along with its spine”, and noted there have been longstanding policies at organisations like the NCAA allowing for transgender participation.
Marcelle Afram, a transgender rights activist and transgender man, said Trump’s order “is a blatant attack on trans rights and feeds into the culture war of anti-trans hysteria”.
“It’s another obvious attempt to police trans bodies, further marginalising an already vulnerable community,” he told the BBC.
The day before Trump signed the order – titled Keeping Men Out Of Women’s Sports – three former swimmers at the University of Pennsylvania sued the NCAA, the University of Pennsylvania, and others.
The lawsuit alleges that the organisations violated Title IX by allowing their former teammate, Lia Thomas, who is transgender, to compete against them.
Less than 1% of the population over the age of 13 in the US are transgender, according to a study by the UCLA Williams Institute, and the number playing sports is smaller.
The latest activity is a part of a policy shift under the new administration.
On his first day in office, Trump signed a separate executive order calling for the federal government to officially define sex as either being male or female.