Olympics, Paralympics to follow Trump ban on transgender women athletes
July 23 (UPI) -- The U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee announced Monday that it plans to follow President Donald Trump's executive order banning transgender women from women's sports.
The organization announced the change by updating its 27-page Athlete Safety Policy, which doesn't mention the word "transgender" at all. The document is dated June 18 but was published on the USOPC's website on Monday. It says the committee will comply with Trump's February order.
"From now on, women's sports will be only for women," he said of the decree called Executive Order 14201 "No Men In Women's Sports Executive Order" during a ceremony Feb. 5 with athletes in the White House. In the Order, Trump said that banning "male competitive participation in women's sports" is a matter of safety, fairness, dignity, and truth."
"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 on the USOPC website says.
USOPC CEO Sarah Hirshland and President Gene Sykes said in a letter to the Team USA community that they had engaged in "a series of respectful and constructive conversations with federal officials" before making the change.
"As a federally chartered organization, we have an obligation to comply with federal expectations," the letter said. "The guidance we've received aligns with the Ted Stevens Act, reinforcing our mandated responsibility to promote athlete safety and competitive fairness."
Whether any Olympians will be affected in the 2028 Olympics isn't clear. No athlete has won an Olympic medal while competing as an openly transgender woman.
"In our world of elite sport, these elements of fairness demand that we reconcile athlete inclusion and athlete opportunity," the USOPC website said. "The only way to do that for all genders, and specifically for those who are transgender, is to rely on real data and science-based evidence rather than ideology. That means making science-based decisions, sport by sport and discipline by discipline, within both the Olympic and Paralympic movements."
About 1.3 million adults and 300,000 youth ages 13 to 17 identify as transgender out of 330 million people, according to a report published by Williams Institute, a think tank at UCLA's Law School in 2022.
Fewer than 40 of the NCAA's more than 500,000 athletes are known to be transgender, said Anna Baeth, director of research at Athlete Ally, an organization that advocates for LGBTQ equality in sports.
Transgender athletes are allowed to compete in the Olympics if they meet the eligibility criteria set by their sport's International Federation.
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