The Trump administration is trying to make a change to federal regulations that would bar thousands of U.S. girls from school sports.
The change would be to a provision in Title IX, the 1972 landmark federal civil rights law, that bans sex discrimination in schools receiving federal funding and requires those schools to provide athletic opportunities for the “underrepresented sex.”
Currently, that means that in schools where there is only a boys’ team for certain sports, girls are allowed to try out for the team. For instance, according to the National Federation of State High School Associations, there were more than 4,000 U.S. girls who played on 11-person boys’ football teams during the 2023-2024 school year.
This attempted change is part of President Donald Trump’s multi-agency push to repeal civil rights advances and bar equal opportunities for transgender Americans. In this instance, not only would transgender children be barred from sports, but cisgender girls would also lose rights that they’ve had for more than five decades.
“To uphold the spirit and promise of Title IX, we urge for [the proposed change] to be withdrawn,” the Women’s Sports Foundation said in a statement to The Hill.
Similarly, Kel O’Hara, senior attorney for policy and education equity at Equal Rights Advocates, told HuffPost that this could be used to destroy even more civil rights down the road.
“The really concerning part from my perspective is that this could essentially provide a blueprint for dismantling civil rights protections across the board,” they said.
Bizarrely, the Trump administration is pursuing this change through the Department of Energy rather than the Department of Education, which traditionally handles matters like this. But the Education Department has been subject to layoffs triggered by the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, and Trump is trying to destroy the entire agency.
Trump and other Republicans, along with right-wing media outlets like Fox News, have consistently demonized transgender people over the last several years in an effort to motivate conservative voters to support the GOP while simultaneously encouraging violent bigots.
The attack on human rights can now count school sports as another casualty of the Trump regime.