Trump signs executive order keeping men out of women’s sports – Catholic News Agency

By Kate Quiñones
CNA Staff, Feb 5, 2025 / 18:35 pm
President Donald Trump signed an order to keep men out of women’s sports on Wednesday afternoon in a move intended “to protect opportunities for women and girls to compete in safe and fair sports,” according to the order.   
“With this executive order, the war on women’s sports is over,” Trump said as, surrounded by young female athletes, he signed the order, titled “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports.” 
“Under the Trump administration we will defend the proud tradition of female athletes and we will not allow men to beat up, injure, and cheat our women and our girls,” Trump continued. “From now on, women’s sports will be only for women.” 
The order rescinds funding from educational programs “that deprive women and girls of fair athletic opportunities, which results in the endangerment, humiliation, and silencing of women and girls and deprives them of privacy.”  
In recent years, a growing number of women and girls have been harmed by the inclusion of men in women’s sports. For instance, Payton McNabb was 17 when she became partially paralyzed after a biologically male athlete spiked a volleyball into her face. McNabb has brain damage and paralysis on her right side and has difficulty walking without falling.
In recent years, women have begun to speak out against men competing in women-only sports. For instance, swimmer Riley Gaines and more than a dozen other female athletes filed a lawsuit against the National Collegiate Athletics Association (NCAA) last year alleging that allowing men to compete in women’s competitions denies women protections promised under Title IX of the Education Amendments Act of 1972.  
The Executive order is based on Title IX, which bans discrimination based on sex in schools and was designed to protect women’s rights in higher education. The order notes that under Title IX, “educational institutions receiving Federal funds cannot deny women an equal opportunity to participate in sports.”
Federal funding will be pulled from any schools that don’t comply. 
“If you let men take over women’s sports teams or invade your locker rooms you will be investigated for violations of  Title IX and you will risk your federal funding,” Trump said. “There will be no federal funding.” 
The order is designed to “defend the safety of athletes, protect competitive integrity, and uphold the promise of Title IX,” press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a Wednesday briefing prior to Trump’s signing of the order.  
The order also looks ahead to the Olympics, which will be held in Italy in 2026 and in Los Angeles in 2028. 
Last year’s Summer Olympics in France was peppered with controversies about requirements for participation in women’s sports when an Algerian boxer with male chromosomes defeated an Italian woman boxer in an Olympics boxing match after landing a devastating punch to the woman’s face in the brief 46-second fight.
The order instructs the Secretary of State to “use all appropriate and available measures to see that the International Olympic Committee amends the standards governing Olympic sporting events to promote fairness, safety, and the best interests of female athletes by ensuring that eligibility for participation in women’s sporting events is determined according to sex and not gender identity or testosterone.”  
The order follows Trump’s Jan. 20 executive order “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government” that asserted that the federal government recognizes two sexes, male and female, and that those sexes are unchangeable and grounded in reality. In another executive order, Trump restricted transgender surgeries and treatments for minors.
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Trump issued the order “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government” on his first day in office.
President Donald Trump last week issued an executive order restricting transgender surgeries and drugs for youth.
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