The president’s latest anti-transgender executive action, similar to his other orders, could face legal action.
Controversial world leaders invited to Trump’s inauguration
Donald Trump’s inauguration guest list is breaking tradition, as he has invited a number of controversial world leaders, signaling his continued alignment with right-wing figures.
unbranded – Newsworthy
WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump on Wednesday is expected to issue an executive order barring transgender women and girls from playing on school sports teams that correspond with their gender identities, according to a Republican congresswoman.
Rep. Nancy Mace, an outspoken opponent of trans rights from South Carolina, said in a press release Tuesday that she will stand alongside the president as he signs the decree, entitled “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports.” A White House spokesperson declined to comment about the plans when reached for comment on Tuesday.
Legal and civil rights experts have said it’s not clear Trump has the authority to implement such broad restrictions immediately and unilaterally at the federal level. To formally prevent trans students from playing in school sports, Congress would likely have to amend the 1972 sex discrimination law known as Title IX, or the Education Department would have to process new regulations.
The question of whether trans student-athletes have a right to play on their chosen team has remained unresolved by the courts, said Scott Schneider, an employment and education lawyer. For that reason, he said, the president’s announcement won’t have wide-ranging implications.
“There is no real practical significance to it,” he said, referring to the congresswoman’s description of the planned executive order. “Absent a court decision in your jurisdiction, or a change in Title IX, the status quo is maintained.”
While many states already have restrictions in place to curb or block trans athletes’ participation in school sports, others provide explicit protections for them.
The president and other Republicans in recent years have exaggerated the extent to which trans youth, who make up only 1.4% of American teenagers according to federal survey data, participate in sports. A 2017 study of 17,000 young people found that about one in 10 trans boys said they played sports, and the statistic is roughly the same for trans girls.
Still, conservatives including Mace have accused schools with trans-inclusive policies of trading women’s rights for “woke politics.”
“Women’s sports exist for a reason – because biological differences matter,” she said in a statement Tuesday.
The GOP-controlled U.S. House of Representatives recently passed a bill seeking to accomplish the same objective as Trump’s planned order. Curbing civil rights for transgender people came up often in Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign, and after his victory, it became a point of contention for some Democrats as well.
“No serious country should be telling its children that they were born with the wrong gender,” Trump said in a campaign video two years ago. In the same video, he referred to gender-affirming care as “chemical, physical and emotional mutilation of our youth.”
The order this week comes after former President Joe Biden tried to bolster protections for queer and transgender students, who face disproportionate harassment and barriers to education, research shows. His administration’s efforts, which involved rewriting Title IX, met conservative opposition at every turn.
Just before Trump took office, a federal judge vacated the Biden administration’s revisions to the regulations, which temporarily expanded the definition of sexual misconduct in schools in some states to formally include gender identity.
Zachary Schermele is an education reporter for USA TODAY. You can reach him by email at zschermele@usatoday.com. Follow him on X at @ZachSchermele.