The NCAA can’t win for losing when it comes to the transgender athlete issue.
The association has again run afoul of female athletes despite changing its eligibility policy last month to require students to compete based on sex at birth, not gender identity, in a bow to President Trump’s executive order on single-sex sports.
The updated policy says that sex is determined by an athlete’s “sex assigned at birth … which is marked on their birth records.”
The problem? Forty-four states let individuals change the “male” or “female” designation on their birth certificates to reflect their current gender identity, leading the Independent Council on Women’s Sports to call the revamped policy “even more permissive than before.”
“Previously, men could compete in women’s sports if they suppressed their testosterone levels,” said ICONS in a statement. “The updated rules eliminate even this requirement, permitting men to compete on women’s college teams by obtaining a birth certificate not marked ’male,’ which can be easily accomplished through a straightforward application process in forty-four states and many countries around the world.”
In addition, the policy says that “member schools remain responsible for certifying student-athlete eligibility for practice and competition.”
Those member schools include universities in blue states with laws banning discrimination based on gender identity.
“The NCAA has also removed itself from eligibility monitoring, leaving schools to accept easily changeable ’birth records’ as the sole criterion for women’s team participation,” said ICONS.
Advocates for single-sex female sports initially praised the “Participation Policy for Transgender Student-Athletes” issued by NCAA President Charlie Baker on Feb. 6, a day after Mr. Trump signed the “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports” executive order.
“Exciting news! Due to my Executive Order, which I proudly signed yesterday, the NCAA has officially changed their policy allowing men in Women’s Sports – it is now banned!” Mr. Trump said in a Feb. 6 post on Truth Social.
The NCAA has defended the policy update, insisting that it will not accept altered birth certificates.
“The policy is clear that there are no waivers available, and a student-athlete assigned male at birth may not compete on a women’s team with amended birth certificates or other forms of ID,” said the NCAA in a statement.
Then again, it’s not always possible to tell whether the gender marker on a birth certificate has been changed.
Some states do indicate on the updated birth certificate that the document has been amended, according to the Advocates for Trans Equality’s “ID Documents Center.” But other states will issue a new birth certificate with no indication of a previous one.
In Colorado, for example, the 2019 law says that “the new birth certificate supersedes the original as the official public record and must not be marked as amended or indicate in any other manner that the gender designation or name on the certificate has been changed.”
🚨The NCAA’s “transgender” policy is a TROJAN HORSE!
While the new policy might appear reasonable at a glance, a closer look reveals a massive loophole that actually streamlines the process of allowing males to compete in women’s sports. 🧵… pic.twitter.com/HnJRehRQhg
— Colin Wright (@SwipeWright) February 27, 2025
The NCAA policy is already facing a legal challenge. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton accused the association of violating the state’s Deceptive Trade Practices Act by falsely promoting “women’s” sports that include biological males.
The lawsuit filed last month in Lubbock County District Court said the revised eligibility standard “does not, in fact, keep men out of women’s sports,” denouncing it as “an illusion of change designed to trick consumers into re-engaging with the NCAA.”
District Judge Les Hatch rejected Tuesday the state’s request for a temporary injunction ordering the NCAA either to stop describing its sports teams as “women’s,” or adopt sex-screening procedures such as the SRY test, which locates the presence of the sex-determining region Y gene found in males.
“I’m not commenting about the NCAA policy, whether it was right or wrong at that time,” Judge Hatch said as reported by the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal. “But you’ve asked me to order SRY gene testing or remove the word ’women,’ but I don’t think we’re there yet.”
He also raised questions about testing accuracy, saying that “I don’t think SRY testing is going to accomplish with 100% certainty what you want it to. Or at least I didn’t hear that it does.”
Texas Values President Jonathan Saenz, who attended the hearing, said there was a good deal of back-and-forth between attorneys for the NCAA and the state over what the policy does and doesn’t say.
“It didn’t even sound like the NCAA had a strong handle on exactly what their statement said,” Mr. Saenz said. “The lawyers kept having to look back at it.”
Also testifying against the updated policy were current and former NCAA Division l athletes, including volleyball player Brooke Slusser and swimmers Kylee Alons, Riley Gaines and Kaitlynn Wheeler.
The National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics, an NCAA competitor that governs mostly small colleges, specifically mentioned “biological sex” last year in its revised policy excluding male-born athletes from female sports.
“For the sake of this policy, biological sex is defined by distinguishing characteristics and can be supported by birth certificate or signed affidavit,” said the NAIA in its April policy. “While rare, there have been cases where the sex assigned at birth does not match the biological sex, which led to the use of biological sex in this document.”
The updated NCAA policy also allows male-born students to practice with female teams, and “receive all other benefits applicable to student-athletes who are otherwise eligible for practice.”
That section has raised questions about whether transgender athletes may change and shower in women’s locker rooms or share hotel rooms with female athletes if travelling with the team.
“When Charlie Baker first released a statement saying they were going to be in line with the Trump administration, that made everyone believe, OK, there’s no wiggle room or loophole here to where a male could actually compete in women’s sports,” Mr. Saenz said.
“But when you actually look at their policy, a lot of people realize, ’wait a minute, this is not as airtight and complete as it should be,’” he concluded.
