Across the United States, more and more states are enforcing laws to prohibit transgender women from participating in girls’ sports. On February 5, President Trump signed an executive order for a new state policy that restricts transgender women from playing women’s sports at their school.
These policies have caused controversy over fairness, exclusion and the scientific and factual basis. Supporters of these policies claim that they protect and keep women’s sports fair, while those opposed to the policies argue that they exclude students and do not have scientific evidence to support their claim.
In 2022, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) altered its policy to allow transgender students to participate using a sport-by-sport policy. This permitted transgender athletes to compete under different rules for different sports. This policy was created with the goal of being fair and including all students.
In 2025, the NCAA revised its policy again to state that it would only allow student athletes who were assigned female at birth to participate. In other words, transgender women do not get to participate in women’s sports at all. The NCAA is in charge of college sports, but its policies still matter for high school athletes because they set rules students must follow to play sports in college.
According to PBS News, “NCAA President Charlie Baker testified that, out of the more than 500,000 total college student athletes, he believed fewer than 10 were transgender.”
Although this statistic applies to college athletes, it shows that the overall number of transgender student athletes is small. This led to questioning about why such a ban was implemented when few student-athletes were impacted.
For most high school students, sports are not just about winning. They enhance their mental well-being, improve confidence and give students a routine. Opponents argue that the exclusion of transgender athletes can hurt their mental health, while supporters argue that they are protecting opportunities for cisgender girls.
For many years, there have been cases of gender discrimination in sports. Transgender women have been participating in girls’ sports for years, and there is no evidence that they have any athletic ability that cis women do not have.
According to an ACLU article, Andraya Yearwood, a junior at Cromwell High School in Connecticut, points out that, “all athletes, cis and trans, compete with different advantages, but only some are questioned.”
All people, whether they play sports, know someone who does or just enjoys watching them, have different values when it comes to fairness and inclusion. What seems like protecting opportunities for cisgender girls to some may be thought of as exclusion that affects real students in their everyday lives to others.
As educational institutions, as well as the states, continue to change their policies, the question about what type of school environment these policies have influenced is too. Both supporters and opponents of the policy thought that they were protecting students in different ways, which shows how difficult it can be to create laws that are fair to everyone involved.
