President Trump signed an executive order on Wednesday aimed at prohibiting transgender women and girls from competing in women’s sports, directing agencies to withdraw federal funding for any schools that refused to comply.
“From now on, women’s sports will be only for women,” he said in the East Room of the White House before signing the order.
The order sought to deliver on an issue that Mr. Trump made a key theme of his campaign, which frequently denounced transgender athletes. But the directive relies on the Education Department — which Mr. Trump has vowed to eliminate — to achieve its end through a revised interpretation of federal civil rights laws. Schools that do not follow these laws can lose federal funding.
On Tuesday, the Education Department reminded schools of their obligations under Title IX, the 1972 law prohibiting sex discrimination in educational programs that receive federal funding, after having reverted to the policy put in place during Mr. Trump’s first administration.
The Biden administration had put forth a rule last year that made discrimination or harassment based on sexual orientation or gender identity a violation of federal civil rights law.
In January, a federal judge vacated that regulation, finding that it violated the First Amendment rights of students or staff members who refused to acknowledge transgender identity on moral or religious grounds. Trump officials have since embraced the ruling as providing a path back to using the standards set for enforcing Title IX in 2020.
“This is a wildly popular position with the American people,” Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, told reporters, appearing to cite a poll by the The New York Times and Ipsos from January in which 67 percent of Democratic respondents opposed transgender athletes competing in women’s sports.
The change could compel athletic governing bodies, such as the National Collegiate Athletic Association, to update their policies to comply with the order. In January, the N.C.A.A.’s president had called for greater legal clarity on the issue from regulators, and indicated that the organization would tailor its stance on transgender athletes to correspond with federal law.
More than two dozen states already bar transgender athletes from participating in school sports, whether in K-12 schools or at the collegiate level. And in January, days before Mr. Trump’s inauguration, the House passed a bill to bar transgender women and girls from sports programs for female students nationwide.
Conservative nonprofits and lawmakers celebrated the order, praising the Trump administration’s recognition of two “immutable” sexes — male and female — and its rejection of any gender identity outside that binary.
“No amount of activism, corporate pressure or lies can erase reality — men are biologically different from women,” Representative Nancy Mace, Republican of South Carolina, said in a statement. “This executive order restores fairness, upholds Title IX’s original intent and defends the rights of female athletes who have worked their whole lives to compete at the highest levels.”
Critics of proposals to bar transgender athletes have pointed to the harm posed by categorically excluding a group of people from a school activity, and the tide of misinformation overstating the scope of the controversy.
Last year, Mr. Trump frequently railed against transgender athletes on the campaign trail, and embraced debunked claims whipped up on social media, including about a female boxer whose eligibility was challenged during the Paris Olympics over false claims that she was transgender.
“It segregates a group of young children, bars them from something that all other kids get to do, and forces schools and teachers to pile on or risk their jobs,” said Tyler Hack, the executive director of the Christopher Street Project, a political action committee and nonprofit started last month in response to Mr. Trump’s transgender policies.
“It’s a moment where we need everyone to stand up and be vocal,” Mr. Hack said.
Mr. Trump’s executive orders concerning gender and diversity and equity policies have already run into legal challenges.
On Tuesday, stymying one of Mr. Trump’s first executive orders, a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order blocking the Bureau of Prisons from housing transgender women with male inmates or halting medical treatment related to gender transitions.
Under former President Joseph R. Biden Jr., the Education Department had proposed additional Title IX regulations that would have prohibited blanket bans on transgender athletes. But it withdrew the regulations from consideration in December in part to prevent them from being hastily rewritten and co-opted by the incoming Trump administration.
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