The U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee (USOPC) has officially changed its rules and will bar transgender athletes from competing in women’s sports. That will put them in compliance with President Donald Trump’s executive order on the matter.
Transgender rule change
A 27-page document called the USOPC Athlete Safety Policy outlined the changes but was short on specifics. The document never mentions the word “transgender” but does imply the change.
“The USOPC will continue to collaborate with various stakeholders with oversight responsibilities, e.g., IOC, IPC, NGBs, to ensure that women have a fair and safe competition environment consistent with Executive Order 14201 and the Ted Stevens Olympic & Amateur Sports Act,” the document said.
Executive Order 14201 is the president’s order titled “No Men in Women’s Sports.”
“As a federally chartered organization, we have an obligation to comply with federal expectations,” a USOPC official told the New York Times.
USA Fencing put out its own transgender and nonbinary policy last month. They will allow transgender men to compete in the men’s category, but the women’s category will only be “athletes of the female sex who meet all entry criteria.”
Los Angeles will host the 2028 Summer Games.
Trans people in Olympic competition
No transgender athlete has ever won a solo Olympic competition, but it’s a topic the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has struggled with for several years.
Just last month, the IOC announced a working group to “protect” the female category.
“We are going to set up a working group made up of experts and International Federations,” IOC President Kirsty Coventry said in a statement. “It was agreed by the Members that the IOC should take a leading role in this, and that we should be the ones to bring together the experts, bring together the International Federations, and ensure that we find consensus.”
The IOC put out a framework for transgender athletes in November 2021. The new guidance defers to individual international federations, like the USOPC, to determine eligibility criteria for transgender athletes.
That guidance came after several transgender athletes competed at the Summer Olympics in Tokyo. Last year’s games in Paris saw controversy over Algerian boxer Imane Khelif, a cisgender woman who was falsely accused of being trans.
She won gold despite being barred from the 2023 World Championships for failing gender eligibility tests, which were heavily disputed as politically motivated.
