The Virginia High School League this week said that it will continue with its policy of allowing transgender student-athletes to compete in high school sports despite new guidance set forth by the Virginia Department of Education which recommended that participation of students in any athletic program separated by sex shall be determined by sex assigned at birth, rather than gender or gender identity.
The VDE policy was released by governor Glenn Youngkin on July 18 and included guidance for K-12 athletes.
However, the VHSL executive committee voted unanimously in 2014 to approve participation for transgender athletes, and executive director Billy Haun said during an interview Wednesday with the Richmond Times-Dispatch that the model policy set forth by the VDOE have no bearing on existing league policy and are merely seen as guidance.
“We have a policy, it’s been in place since 2014. We think it meets the needs, it has met the needs of our membership and our 133 school divisions and 317 schools. So we are going to stay with the policy that we have,” Haun said.
“We respectfully will accept whatever the school divisions chose to do, whether they chose to use the new guidance or whether they chose to stay with their old guidelines or their old policies ... the VHSL will respect those and everybody will still be eligible to play.”
Haun said school divisions are responsible for deciding if the new guidelines should impact their existing policies. He said in a memo that the VHSL will respect any school division's decision to modify their existing rules.
“The VHSL policy is the guidance for our member high schools. But each local school division can chose to use whatever guidelines they want,” Haun said.
“So if they want to stay with whatever transgender policy they have, then they can do that. If they want to follow the guidelines of the new model policy, then they can follow that guidance. That, either way, will fit into what we currently do as the VHSL.
“So we are not dictating to any school division what they do or what they have to do. We’re just saying ‘Here’s our policy, it has worked for us since 2014. So we are going to continue to use the same policy.’”
