NAIA Institutes Restrictions on Transgender Females Competing in Women’s Sports

Photo Courtesy: Lileana Pearson

NAIA Institutes Restrictions on Transgender Females Competing in Women’s Sports

The National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics, which includes 241 small colleges throughout the United States, has voted to restrict participation in women’s sports competition to exclude transgender females beginning with the 2024-25 school year. The policy leaves openings for transgender females to participate in team practices, workouts and activities but not in competition.

According to the Associated Press, the NAIA approved the measure in a unanimous, 20-0 vote. The NAIA’s new rule will open up men’s competition to any athlete, including transgender males, “but only athletes whose biological sex assigned at birth is female and have not begun hormone therapy will be allowed participate in women’s sports,” per the AP. Competitive cheer and competitive dance, which were not previously broken down by gender, will remain open to all participants.

NAIA President and CEO Jim Carr told the AP that his organization was thinking primarily of fairness and an even competitive playing field with the creation of this new rule.

“We know there are a lot of opinions, and a lot of people have a very emotional reaction to this, and we want to be respectful of all that,” Carr said. “But we feel like our primary responsibility is fairness in competition, so we are following that path. And we’ve tried as best we could to allow for some participation by all.”

The AP includes a response from Shiwali Patel, senior counsel at the National Women’s Law Center, who called the NAIA decision “unacceptable and blatant discrimination that not only harms trans, nonbinary and intersex individuals, but limits the potential of all athletes.”

The article notes that an estimated 1.8% of U.S. high school students are transgender, with fewer than 15% participating in sports. It is unclear how many transgender females are currently part of NAIA-sponsored athletics teams, but the number is believed to be small.

The issue of whether transgender females would be allowed to compete in high-level sports became a hot-button topic two years ago when Penn swimmer Lia Thomas emerged as one of the top swimmers in the country during her lone season racing for the women’s team. After a two-month stretch when the NCAA was forced to publicly defend its transgender inclusion policy, change the policy and then change it again, Thomas ended up competing at the NCAA Championships and winning a national title in the 500-yard freestyle.

Months later, World Aquatics adopted a policy placing severe limitations on trans females competing in women’s events. The organization planned to create an “open” category of competition, but such events have yet to be held.

Most recently, 16 former collegiate swimmers filed a lawsuit against the NCAA over its handling of transgender inclusion. Outside of swimming, University of South Carolina women’s basketball coach Dawn Staley said that she believed transgender females should be allowed to play women’s sports. Staley led the Gamecocks to a national title, completing an undefeated season, one day later.

Read the full report from the Associated Press here.

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