Republicans press NCAA to ban male-born athletes from female sports as Biden Title IX redo kicks in

GOP senators urged the NCAA to limit participation in female sports to biological women only, citing the threat from the Biden administration’s “unprecedented assault” on Title IX.

“The 2024 Summer Olympics are upon us, and the NCAA has boasted about its athletes’ participation,” said the Tuesday letter to NCAA President Charlie Baker signed by 23 Senate Republicans. “Yet the NCAA has still taken no steps to protecting a critical portion of these athletes.”

The NCAA continues to allow male-born students who identify as women in female athletics as long as they meet the transgender-eligibility criteria set by the national governing bodies of each sport.

For most NCAA fall sports, that means transgender athletes must keep their testosterone in serum below 10 nmol/L for a certain period, a requirement that fails to take into account the myriad other advantages enjoyed by athletes who went through male puberty, the Republicans said.

“Males have inherent athletic advantages over females due to their anatomy and biology — including through having larger hearts, higher red blood count, greater lung capacity, longer endurance, larger muscle mass, differences in bone density and geometry, and lower body fat,” the letter, led by GOP Sens. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee and Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, said.

They also noted that the NCAA voted in April to bar male-born athletes from women’s sports, except competitive cheer and dance. The policy took effect Aug. 1.

Transgender athletes take hormones to lower their testosterone, but the senators cited a study showing that “estrogen therapy does not reverse the majority of athletic performance parameters, and biological males continue to have innate advantages.”

At its April meeting, the NCAA Board of Governors said the current policy on transgender student participation “remains under review” and that the “NCAA will continue to promote Title IX.”

Women’s sports groups have pushed the NCAA for years to allow only women in women’s sports, but the issue took on new urgency on Aug. 1, the launch date of the Biden administration’s policy adding “gender identity” to Title IX’s ban on sex discrimination in education.

The Education Department rewrite requires schools to extend access to female facilities and programs to male-born students who identify as female in the name of “educational equity,” although court orders have temporarily halted the policy in 26 states pending litigation.

Backing the Senate letter was Our Bodies, Our Sports, a coalition of women fighting to keep single-sex female sports.

“In conjunction with the Biden-Harris administration, the NCAA has turned their back on women by disregarding Title IX and its original intent,” former University of Kentucky All-American swimmer Riley Gaines said in Ms. Blackburn’s letter. “It’s unfair, it’s unsafe and it’s discriminatory. I’m grateful to Senator Blackburn and every senator who has joined this effort to fight for our rights to equal opportunity, privacy, and safety.”

The Women’s Sports Policy Working Group, which includes former female Olympians, said that it “isn’t possible to give women equality in sport without a sex division; women require their own category.”

The group added, “The NCAA must limit the female category to females only and embark on a culture-change initiative to ensure that men who identify as transgender feel welcomed by men’s teams. Women’s teams already extend this welcome mat to women, regardless of gender identity, and those women almost always remain in the women’s category.”

The Biden administration has insisted that its Title IX policy doesn’t apply to female sports, but critics disagree, saying there’s nothing to stop the rule from being extended to athletics.

A second Title IX rule on transgender eligibility in female sports, which proposes that schools adopt policies based on the sport, age group and competition level, is expected to be released after the Nov. 5 election.