More than 400 current and former Olympic, professional and collegiate athletes, over 300 academics and roughly 100 advocacy groups released separate letters Tuesday urging the NCAA not to ban transgender women from competing in women’s college sports.
As reported by NBC News, the letters were coordinated by LGBTQ sports advocacy group Athlete Ally, and the signatories include former U.S. Women’s National Team soccer co-captain Megan Rapinoe, former WNBA and Olympic basketball star Sue Bird, and former NFL defensive end R.K. Russell.
Meanwhile, the nation’s leading coalition of women’s advocacy organizations fighting for equal opportunity and fairness in women’s sports — Our Bodies, Our Sports — has activated its own nationwide campaign, driving more than 4,000 personalized letters from NCAA female athletes to the NCAA Board of Governors, according to Independent Women's Forum.
Additionally, Our Bodies, Our Sports delivered a coalition letter signed by its 12 member organizations from across the political aisle demanding the NCAA take immediate action to repeal its discriminatory policy that allows male athletes to compete in women’s sports — taking trophies, roster sports, playing time, resources and opportunities to compete from women.
The opposing efforts come as the NCAA Board of Governors plans to meet today.
A letter signed by athletes advocating for transgender participation reads, “We call on you to be on the right side of history and affirm that sport is truly for us all. Do not ban transgender women from NCAA women’s sports.”
In a separate statement from Rapinoe, arguably the most famous athlete to sign, according to NBC's Matt Lavietes, the two-time Olympic medalist said “bans against trans athletes framed as ‘protecting women’s sports’ do not speak for us, and do nothing to protect us.”
“The time is now for the NCAA and the nationwide athletic community to speak up and affirm that sports should be for everyone, including transgender athletes,” Rapinoe said in the statement released by Athlete Ally.
When asked about the letters, the NCAA said in a statement that “college sports are the premier stage for women’s sports in America and the NCAA will continue to promote Title IX, make unprecedented investments in women’s sports and ensure fair competition for all student-athletes in all NCAA championships.”
As reported by Lavietes, the NCAA has permitted transgender women to compete on women’s sports teams under certain conditions since 2010. In 2022, the association announced that it would adopt a sport-by-sport approach. The current guidelines, like the 2010 guidelines, require transgender women to undergo at least one year of testosterone suppression, but the new rules largely defer the specifics to the national governing body for each sport.
According to the IWF report, the NCAA has a short window of opportunity to lead on the issue of sex equality. After the filing of a first-of-its-kind female athlete lawsuit against the NCAA (Gaines et al v NCAA et al), the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) Council of Presidents unanimously voted to amend its policy to prohibit males in women’s sports, and hearing from NCAA female athletes who demand change, the NCAA Board is expected to consider its current participation policies and women’s sports during today's meeting.
Our Bodies, Our Sports and women’s advocacy groups from across the political spectrum that represent their interests oppose the continued participation in women's sports of athletes who have transitioned after being born male. These groups include Women’s Sports Policy Working Group, Champion Women, Independent Women’s Forum (IWF), Independent Council on Women’s Sports (ICONS), the US Chapter of Women’s Declaration International (WDI USA), Concerned Women for America (CWA), Women’s Liberation Front (WoLF), Independent Women’s Voice (IWV), Young Women for America (YWA), Independent Women’s Law Center (IWLC), International Consortium on Female Sports (ICFS), and Independent Women’s Network (IWN), the IWF reported.
These groups content that the NCAA's current policy, adopted without input of female athletes and their advocates, contradicts scientific studies that have found testosterone suppression cannot eliminate the male athletic advantage. Moreover, it ignores the legal obligation of its member schools to provide males and females equal opportunities to compete.
The IWF claims that. "In the last week alone, more than 130,000 personalized emails and letters have been delivered to the NCAA Board of Governors — this includes letters from more than 4,000 NCAA female athletes (current and former)."
