Dive Brief:
- The U.S. Department of Education opened Title IX investigations Thursday into a middle and high school athletics association and two universities that it says have allowed transgender women and girls to participate on teams corresponding with their gender identity.
- The agency’s Office for Civil Rights is investigating the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association, San José State University and the University of Pennsylvania. OCR is also reviewing athletics participation policies at “a number of schools.”
- The investigations come just one day after President Donald Trump signed an executive order barring transgender women from playing on women’s sports teams and threatening to pull federal funding from educational institutions that don’t comply.
Dive Insight:
The announced Title IX investigations suggest that implementing the executive order will be a priority for the Education Department under Trump. That approach is a far cry from the Biden administration, which had proposed — but ultimately withdrew — regulations that would have prohibited blanket bans on transgender students participating in sports corresponding with their gender identities.
“The previous administration trampled the rights of American women and girls — and ignored the indignities to which they were subjected in bathrooms and locker rooms — to promote a radical transgender ideology,” Craig Trainor, the department's acting assistant secretary for civil rights, said in a statement Thursday. “That regime ended on January 20, 2025.”
The term “transgender ideology” is often used by anti-LGBTQ+ groups to imply that someone’s transgender identity “is not real but is instead a belief system that is imposed on others,” according to civil rights advocacy group Southern Poverty Law Center.
The new executive order is just one of several directives targeting transgender people that Trump has signed in the days since he took office. Among them, one order aims to bar transgender people from serving in the military, while another attempts to end federal funding for gender-affirming care for transgender individuals younger than age 19 — both of which have prompted legal challenges.
LGBTQ+ advocates swiftly condemned Trump’s latest executive order.
“Make no mistake, multiple states have attempted to enact similar bans. We’ve confronted them in court repeatedly and have won repeatedly,” Lambda Legal Senior Attorney Carl Charles said in a Wednesday statement. “There is no reason to think a national ban will avoid being similarly squashed.”
The the middle and high school athletics association and two universities under investigation sparked polarizing debates over athletics prior the department's announcement.
In February 2024, the girls’ basketball team for the Collegiate Charter School of Lowell, in Massachusetts, forfeited a game at halftime following several injuries that allegedly involved a transgender student on the opposing team, The Boston Globe reported.
At the time, an official with the ACLU of Massachusetts told the Globe that the controversy surrounding the game was “part of a coordinated attempt nationwide to try to remove LGBTQ people from public life.”
An online copy of MIAA’s handbook says transgender students should not be excluded from sports teams corresponding to their “bona fide gender identity.”
MIAA said in an email Thursday that it is aware of the Title IX investigation.
“The MIAA has historically complied with all applicable federal and state laws,” it said in the statement. “We are currently seeking guidance from the Office of the Attorney General and our own legal counsel on our next step. We are especially interested in determining this investigation’s impact on teams currently playing the winter season and on our upcoming tournaments.”
San José State is facing a lawsuit from roughly a dozen volleyball athletes — including a current player and a coach from its own team — who allege that the public institution violated Title IX by allowing a woman they say is transgender to play on its women’s team. The group, who is also suing the Mountain West Conference, sought to block the player from competing in a Mountain West tournament in late November, though the judge denied that request.
In response to the Title IX investigation, San José State President Cynthia Teniente-Matson said the institution is committed to ensuring its students are “treated fairly, free from discrimination, and afforded the rights and protections granted under federal and state law.” Teniente-Matson added that the university will fully engage with the inquiry.
“While we adhere to legal and regulatory requirements, San José State will continue to act within our authority to uphold the values that define us as an institution,” Teniente-Matson said in a statement. “Our focus remains on our values including fostering an environment that cultivates compassion, where every student has the opportunity to thrive.
A handful of former Penn swimmers also filed a lawsuit this week against the Ivy League institution, alleging it violated Title IX by allowing their former teammate Lia Thomas to compete in a 2022 women’s swimming and diving championship. That year, Thomas became the first openly transgender athlete to win an NCAA Division I championship, igniting a debate over gender identity and college athletics.
The three former swimmers alleged in their lawsuit that they were denied “equal opportunities as women to compete and win,” as well as the “opportunity to protect their privacy in separate and equal locker rooms.”
Relatively few transgender athletes compete in college sports. NCAA President Charlie Baker told lawmakers in December that he was aware of fewer than 10 in total out of the 510,000 college athletes that play under the organization.
