Republican-led states urge NCAA to remove transgender athletes' records
The attorneys general, led by Mississippi's Lynn Fitch, sent a letter to NCAA President Charlie Baker calling for the college sports organization to 'restore to female athletes the records, titles, awards, and recognitions they earned but were denied because of policies that allowed biological males to compete in female categories.'
'Female collegiate athletes trained, competed, and triumphed- only to see their recognitions stripped away and devalued by unfair policies that ignored biology,' Fitch said in a statement.
The letter applauds a policy the NCAA adopted in February, shortly after President Trump signed an executive order opposing transgender athletes in girls' and women's sports, to limit competition in women's events to student-athletes 'assigned female at birth only.'
'We encourage you to extend this policy to practice as well. Athletics is not only about what happens during competition,' the attorneys general wrote, adding that the new NCAA policy 'stops short of full fairness for women athletes.'
The NCAA previously allowed transgender women to participate in female sports after completing one year of testosterone suppression treatment. In 2022, the organization said national and international governing bodies should determine eligibility rules for transgender athletes in specific sports.
Under those prior rules, Lia Thomas, then a swimmer at the University of Pennsylvania, became the first transgender woman to win a national Division I championship title in 2022, the year she graduated.
Following a February investigation by the Education Department that found Penn had violated Title IX, the federal law prohibiting sex discrimination, when it allowed Thomas to join the women's swim team for the 2021-22 season, the Ivy League University agreed to remove Thomas's records from its leaderboard.
Thomas broke three of the six Penn women's swimming and diving individual freestyle records in the year she competed. An addendum to the university's women's swimming all-time school records now reads, 'Competing under eligibility rules in effect at the time, Lia Thomas set program records in the 100, 200 and 500 freestyle during the 2021-22 season.'
'All colleges and universities should follow suit,' the attorneys general wrote on Tuesday, 'as should the NCAA.'
In February, the Education Department similarly called for the NCAA and the National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS) to revoke transgender female athletes' records and awards. Doing so, the department wrote in letters to Baker and NFHS President Bob Lombardi, would recognize the harms done by 'misguided policies.'
In Tuesday's letter, the Republican attorneys general said Trump, who made transgender student-athletes central to his reelection campaign's closing argument, 'has made restoring fairness to women athletes a priority.' They touted executive orders signed by the president to ban trans women and girls from competition and recognize only two unchangeable sexes, male and female.
'With more than 500,000 college athletes and approximately 1,100 member schools in all 50 states, the NCAA has the opportunity and privilege to impact the lives of so many student athletes in a positive or negative way,' the attorneys general wrote in their letter to Baker. 'There is no doubt that the women forced to compete against biological males in female events were impacted negatively and unfairly disadvantaged.'
In December, Baker, a former Republican governor of Massachusetts, testified before a Senate panel that fewer than 10 NCAA athletes are transgender.
A spokesperson for the organization did not immediately return a request for comment.
Tuesday's letter comes as the Supreme Court is set to decide during its next term whether states may ban transgender athletes from competing on girls' and women's school sports teams. The justices agreed earlier this month to hear appeals from West Virginia Attorney General JB McCuskey (R) and Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador (R) — both of whom signed the letter to Baker — defending their state bans, with a decision expected by next summer.
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