The U.S. Department of Energy is preparing to roll back a portion of Title IX requiring that some sports be open to “the underrepresented sex” — sports that have traditionally included tackle football.
As reported by The Hill, President Trump’s administration has said Title IX conflicts with his executive order to restrict transgender athletes’ participation, but this new focus would disproportionately affect cisgender girls.
The U.S. Department of Energy is preparing to roll back a portion of Title IX requiring that some sports be open to “the underrepresented sex” — sports that have traditionally included tackle football.
As reported by The Hill, President Trump’s administration has said Title IX conflicts with his executive order to restrict transgender athletes’ participation, but this new focus would disproportionately affect cisgender girls.
Per the reporting of Brooke Migdon, the department, which traditionally does not regulate or enforce Title IX, plans to rescind a rule that has for decades allowed girls to try out for boys’ sports teams, or vice versa, when there is no equivalent team at their school, with some exceptions for contact sports. The move would only affect schools and education programs that receive funding from the Energy Department.
The nonprofit Women’s Sports Foundation said the Energy Department’s proposal threatens to unravel years of progress and limit athletic opportunities for girls.
“To uphold the spirit and promise of Title IX, we urge for it to be withdrawn,” the group said in an emailed statement to The Hill.
In justifying its proposal, announced last month, the Energy Department said athletics rules allowing girls to compete on boys’ teams “ignore differences between the sexes which are grounded in fundamental and incontrovertible reality,” language from Trump’s day one executive order proclaiming the federal government recognizes only two sexes, male and female, Migdon reported.
Rescinding the regulation, the department said, aligns with another Trump order declaring the U.S. opposes “male competitive participation in women’s sports” as a matter of “safety, fairness, dignity and truth.”
The Education Department, which has historically enforced Title IX, has launched more than two dozen investigations this year into states, school districts and sports associations that allow trans girls to compete against and alongside girls who are not transgender. In announcing that the department would recognize June, which is traditionally Pride Month, as “Title IX Month,” Education Secretary Linda McMahon said the administration “will fight on every front to protect women’s and girls’ sports.”
The changes the Department of Energy proposed would do little to further that objective, said James Nussbaum, an attorney focused on education and sports law at Church, Church, Hittle, and Antrim in Indiana.
“I’m scratching my head for the motivation behind [rescinding the rule] because they mention the ‘Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports’ executive order, but it won’t really apply in the vast majority of those cases because [the rule] only allows a person to participate in a sport of the other sex on two conditions,” Nussbaum said, as reported by The Hill. “One, the school doesn’t already offer that sport for their sex, and two, they’re the ‘underrepresented sex’ historically, and that’s just not male sports at the vast majority of schools.”
While no high schools in the U.S. offer an all-girls tackle football team, for example, more than 4,000 girls played 11-person tackle football on boys’ teams for the 2023-2024 school year, according to National Federation of State High Schools Association statistics cited by The Hill's Migdon.
