The National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics voted to adopt a new policy Monday that effectively bans transgender women from participating in most of its women’s intercollegiate sports programs.
TheNAIA, an athletic association consisting of241 mostly small member colleges and universitiesas of 2023, governs intercollegiate athletics for more than 83,000 student-athletes, according to its website.
According to the organization’snew transgender participation policy, “Only NAIA student-athletes whose biological sex is female may participate in NAIA-sponsored female sports. They define “biological sex” as having “distinguishing characteristics and can be supported by birth certificate or signed affidavit.”
Scientists and advocates for the LGBTQ community argue that such definitions do not reflect the biological complexity of sex and gender, and they stress that biology does not override a person’s gender identity.
The new NAIA policy, which takes effect August 1, only bans transgender women and girls from participating. Under the new rules, transgender men and boys can participate on women’s teams without limitation if they were assigned female at birth and have not begun hormone therapy. If they have begun such treatment, they are able to participate in “all activities that are internal to the institution, including workouts, practices,” but the association defers to individual schools to decide if trans men can compete at the collegiate level.
Exempt from the new rules are competitive cheerleading and dance, which the NAIA says are open to all students.
Monday’s announcement was met with swift outcry from LGBTQ rights advocates. Athlete Ally, an organization that works to eliminate transphobia and homophobia in sports, said the new policy “only cultivates exclusion and discrimination.”
“This policy is a failure of leadership by NAIA and marks a sad day for women’s sports,” said Athlete Ally founder & Executive Director Hudson Taylor, in astatementshared with CNN.
Source: CNN