Ahead of the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles, the International Olympic Committee on Thursday banned transgender women from competing in women’s events — a move that was immediately applauded by the White House.
Kirsty Coventry, the first woman to serve as IOC president, made the announcement in a statement Thursday in which she also said that all women who participate in Olympic events will have to undergo genetic testing to confirm they are biologically female.
The decision comes as preparations ramp up for the 2028 Games in Los Angeles — and as the Trump administration aggressively moves to prevent transgender athletes from participating in sports not aligned with their sex assigned at birth.
The White House cheered the decision Thursday, noting in a statement that Trump signed an executive order in February 2025 that aims to ban transgender athletes from participating in women’s and girls’ sports by denying federal funds for schools that allow it.
At the time, the president said that his administration would “not allow men to beat up, injure and cheat our women and our girls.” Trump has also vowed to deny visas to transgender athletes attempting to compete at the L.A. Games.
“The IOC aligning their policy with President Trump’s Executive Order ahead of the 2028 LA Games is common sense and long-overdue,” White House spokesman Davis Ingle said in a statement Thursday.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt credited Trump for the IOC’s decision, saying in a post on X that his executive order “made this happen.”
Coventry, in her statement, said that all athletes “must be treated with dignity and respect” and that the IOC plans to screen athletes’ gender “only once in their lifetime.”
“As a former athlete, I passionately believe in the rights of all Olympians to take part in fair competition. The policy that we have announced is based on science and has been led by medical experts,” Coventry said. “At the Olympic Games, even the smallest margins can be the difference between victory and defeat. So, it is absolutely clear that it would not be fair for biological males to compete in the female category. In addition, in some sports it would simply not be safe.”
There’s no official count of how many transgender women — if any — compete at the Olympics. In recent history, only Laurel Hubbard, a weightlifter from New Zealand, has been recognized as a trans competitor. Hubbard participated in the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, and she did not win a medal.
Still, the IOC explained that its decision was the result of an effort to protect “the female category in an Olympic context that would reflect the findings of the Working Group on the Protection of the Female Category, various IOC consultations, and consideration of recent developments, including in international human rights law.”
“The policy was developed on the basis that it is universally accepted that providing for a female category is necessary to allow both males and females equal access to elite sport,” the IOC said in a statement, noting that the committee wants to ensure “equal opportunities for female athletes in finals, on podiums and in championships” and enhance the “visibility” of female athletes at the games to “inspire and represent women and girls worldwide.”
The National Women’s Law Center, a group that opposed Trump’s executive order, on Thursday condemned the IOC’s decision, saying that the committee is “embracing a policy that invites confusion, stigma, and invasive scrutiny rather than clarity or safety.”
“Vague and medically unnecessary eligibility rules do not protect women — they expose athletes to humiliating questioning, coerced disclosures of private medical information, and even traumatizing physical examinations to ‘prove’ their womanhood,” Brian Dittmeier, the organization’s director of LGBTQI+ equality, said in a statement. “These policies will disproportionately harm women who already face suspicion and discrimination, including women of color and those who don’t adhere to patriarchal expectations of femininity.”
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