Transgender athletes will be banned from competing in women’s Olympic sports under a new policy adopted by the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee.
The change in eligibility rules for athletes in America is a result of President Donald Trump’s February "Keeping Men Out Of Women’s Sports” executive order intended to prevent transgender females from competing in all sporting events, including the Olympics.
How the USOPC explained the new transgender policy
In an email shared with the Deseret News Tuesday, USOPC leaders referred to the president’s order as “aimed at protecting women’s sport” and said since it was signed, the organization has “engaged in a series of respectful and constructive conversations with federal officials.”
What they were told reinforced “our mandated responsibility to promote athlete safety and competitive fairness. Accordingly, we have updated our athlete safety policy to reflect this federal guidance," the email said.
The USOPC email said the “revised policy emphasizes the importance of ensuring fair and safe competition environments for women” and that all U.S. national governing bodies for individual sports “are required to update their applicable policies in alignment.”
Addressed to the “Team USA community,” the email also points out that the Colorado Springs organization is federally chartered under an act of Congress named for a late Alaska senator, Ted Stevens, and as such has “an obligation to comply with federal expectations.”
The New York Times described the policy as having “quietly changed” and appearing Monday “in a short, vaguely worded paragraph” on the USOPC website as part of the section on athlete safety without using the term “transgender” or referring to Trump’s order by name.
A paragraph added to the 27-page USOPC Athlete Safety Policy titled, “Additional Requirements” states the USOPC will work “to ensure that women have a fair and safe competition environment consistent with Executive Order 14201 and the Ted Stevens Olympic & Amateur Sports Act.”
To get that done, the policy says the “USOPC will continue to collaborate with various stakeholders with oversight responsibilities, e.g., IOC, IPC (International Paralympic Committee), NGBs (national governing bodies).”
Posted to the site on Monday, the policy change references Trump’s executive order banning transgender athletes only by number. The order spells out the president expects the International Olympic Committee to take action as well.
It directs Secretary of State Marco Rubio to “use all appropriate and available measures” to get the IOC to set eligibility for participation in women’s sporting events “according to sex and not gender identity or testosterone reduction.”
The executive order also calls for the federal agencies that oversee visas and border entry to prevent foreign males seeking “to participate in women’s sports” from entering the United States “to the extent permitted by law.”
New IOC President Kirsty Coventry of Zimbabwe announced last month a working group is being assembled to examine the issue of what she and others have called protecting the female category in sport.
The IOC’s current policy, adopted in 2021, allows each international sports federation to determine transgender athlete eligibility. Several federations already bar transgender athletes from competing in women’s events, including track and field’s World Athletics.
What new transgender ban means for Utah’s next Olympics
The next Olympics is the 2026 Winter Games in Milan-Cortina, Italy, followed by the 2028 Summer Games in Los Angeles. There has already been speculation about the impact of Trump’s transgender ban on the L.A. Olympics, the first in the U.S. since Utah’s 2002 Winter Games.
Utah will host a second Winter Games in 2034. By then, the new eligibility requirement “will be well-implemented,” said Fraser Bullock, president and executive chair of the Organizing Committee for the 2034 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games.
“We always appreciate the thoughtful leadership of the USOPC. We follow their lead in matters such as this,” Bullock said. “We don’t set eligibility policy. That is set, in this case, by the USOPC in the United States and the IOC worldwide. We accept the guidelines that they give us.”
In April, USOPC Chair Gene Sykes told reporters unspecified “feedback” from the U.S. State Department about the president’s order had been discussed in closed-door board meetings but did not offer any specifics.
“As a board, we reaffirmed our commitment to protecting opportunities for athletes to participate in sport. We will continue to collaborate with various stakeholders with oversight responsibilities,” Sykes said, “to ensure women have a fair and safe competitive environment.”
Ahead of the March IOC presidential election more than two dozen Republicans in the U.S. Congress, including members of Utah’s delegation, sent a letter to then-IOC President Thomas Bach urging the Olympics to “base eligibility for women’s athletic competitions on biological sex.”
The German Olympic leader told reporters that efforts to change the IOC policy were “based on a fake news campaign started in Russia” and cited the controversy surrounding two women boxers whose gender was questioned by some at the 2024 Summer Games in Paris.
He blamed the campaign on the IOC’s withdrawing recognition of the Russian-led International Boxing Association over ethical, financing and other concerns. The IOC had also limited the participation of Russian athletes at the Paris Games due to their country’s invasion of Ukraine.