President Donald Trump will sign an executive order Wednesday designed to prevent people who were assigned male at birth from participating in women's or girls' sporting events.
The order, which Trump is expected to sign at an afternoon ceremony, marks another aggressive shift by the Republican president's second administration in the way the federal government deals with transgender people and their rights.
The president put out a sweeping order on his first day in office last month that called for the federal government to define sex as only male or female and for that to be reflected on official documents such as passports and in policies such as federal prison assignments.
Trump found during the campaign that his pledge to "keep men out of women's sports" resonated beyond the usual party lines. More than half the voters surveyed by AP VoteCast said support for transgender rights in government and society has gone too far.
He leaned into the rhetoric before the election, pledging to get rid of the "transgender insanity," although his campaign offered little in the way of details.
Wednesday's order -- which coincides with National Girls and Women in Sports Day -- will involve how his administration will interpret Title IX, the law best known for its role in pursuing gender equity in athletics and preventing sexual harassment on campuses.
"This executive order restores fairness, upholds Title IX's original intent, and defends the rights of female athletes who have worked their whole lives to compete at the highest levels," said U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace, a Republican from South Carolina.
Every administration has the authority to issue its own interpretations of the landmark legislation. The past two presidential administrations -- including Trump's first -- offer a glimpse at the push-pull involved.
Betsy DeVos, the education secretary during Trump's first term, issued a Title IX policy in 2020 that narrowed the definition of sexual harassment and required colleges to investigate claims only if they're reported to certain officials.
The Biden administration rolled back that policy last April with one of its own that stipulated that the rights of LGBTQ+ students would be protected by federal law and provided new safeguards for victims of campus sexual assault. The policy stopped short of explicitly addressing transgender athletes. Still, more than a half-dozen Republican-led states immediately challenged the new rule in court.
"All Trump has to say is, 'We are going to read the regulation traditionally,'" said Doriane Lambelet Coleman, a professor at Duke Law School.
A source who spoke with NCAA officials told ESPN the association did not oppose the executive order and welcomed federal guidance. The NCAA has struggled to comply with varying state laws on this issue and threats of lawsuits.
"We do have a situation where there is no clarity on this from a legal point of view," NCAA president Charlie Baker said in an interview in January. "You have federal judges ruling on individual cases. You have 26, 27 states with one set of rules -- a bunch of other states with a whole other set of rules. I do think we would welcome some clarity somewhere on this so everyone has a general understanding about what the rules of the game are."
How this order could affect the transgender athlete population -- a number that is incredibly difficult to pin down -- is uncertain.
"This was never about trans athletics, science, or 'fairness.' It has always been about oppression," said Sadie Schreiner, a transgender woman competing in track and field at Rochester Institute of Technology. "They'll attack me all the same whether I'm on or off the track, so the only way I'll stop competing is in handcuffs."
The Associated Press reported in 2021 that, in many cases, the states introducing a ban on transgender athletes could not cite instances when their participation was an issue. When Utah state legislators overrode a veto by Gov. Spencer Cox in 2022, the state had only one transgender girl playing in K-12 sports who would be affected by the ban. It did not regulate participation for transgender boys.
"This is a solution looking for a problem," Cheryl Cooky, a professor at Purdue University who studies the intersection of gender, sports, media and culture, told the AP after Trump was elected.
Yet the actual number of transgender athletes seems to be almost immaterial. Any case of a transgender female athlete competing -- or even believed to be competing -- draws outsized attention, from Lia Thomas swimming for the University of Pennsylvania to the recently completed season of the San Jose State volleyball team.
Information from the Associated Press was used in this report.