Education Department Asks Sports Bodies to Return Awards ‘Misappropriated by Biological Males’

President Donald Trump joined by women athletes signs the “No Men in Women’s Sports” executive order in the East Room at the White House on Feb. 5, 2025. Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

The U.S. Department of Education has asked associations governing sporting events at educational institutions to revoke records and awards secured by males who identified as women while competing in female sports.

On Tuesday, the department’s Office of General Counsel sent a letter to the National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS) and the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), urging them to “restore to female athletes the records, titles, awards, and recognitions misappropriated by biological males competing in female categories,” the department said in a Feb. 11 statement.

These recognitions were “wrongfully credited to the biological males who unfairly competed against girls and women in athletics,” the statement said.

The new policy follows President Donald Trump’s Feb. 5 executive order “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports.” The order clarified it would be the policy of the United States “to oppose male competitive participation in women’s sports more broadly, as a matter of safety, fairness, dignity, and truth.”

“The war on women’s sports is over,” Trump said while signing the executive order surrounded by young female athletes. “From now, women’s sports will be only for women.”

The education department said that its decision to ask associations to restore female sports records is consistent with the NCAA’s new policy.

Last week, the NCAA’s board of governors voted to update the association’s “transgender student-athlete participation policy” following Trump’s order.

According to the new rules, the men’s category is open to all eligible student-athletes, and the women’s category is “restricted to student-athletes assigned female at birth.”

NCAA is made up of 1,100 universities and colleges across 50 states, enrolling more than 530,000 student-athletes.

“The NCAA has correctly changed its tune on its discriminatory practices against female athletes,” Department of Education Deputy General Counsel Candice Jackson said.

Female swimmer Riley Gaines said that “restoring stolen athletic accolades to their rightful owners is a crucial step toward reinstating accountability, integrity, and common sense.”

Protecting Female Sports

Trump’s executive order aims to uphold the administration’s interpretation of the Title IX rules. Created in the 70s, Title IX prohibits discrimination in education based on sex.

The rules established the foundation for women’s athletic programs and ensured females had meaningful competition. The Biden administration took steps to reinterpret Title IX rules to bring LGBT students under its protections.

In April 2023, the Biden administration proposed a rule change to Title IX that would have prohibited schools from enacting outright bans on males identifying as women from participating in women’s teams.

The proposed rule was published in the Federal Register, and the public was invited to comment. In December 2024, the Biden administration withdrew the proposed rule, writing in its Federal Register filing that many of the 150,000 comments were against the rule change. That, along with multiple pending lawsuits related to gender and sports, led the administration “not to regulate on this issue at this time.”

Trump’s order ends “dangerous and unfair” competitions where males are allowed to compete against females in amateur and school events, the White House said.

A 2021 study published in the National Library of Medicine showed there were significant performance gaps between adult elite male and female achievements in sporting activities.

For instance, men were found to have a 16–22 percent advantage in football kicks, tennis serves, and pole vaulting. When it came to volleyball serves, weightlifting, and golf long drives, men had a 29–34 percent advantage. For baseball pitches and field hockey drag flicks, this advantage jumped to more than 50 percent.

The study warned that “the muscular advantage enjoyed by transgender women is only minimally reduced when testosterone is suppressed.”

It advised sports organizations to “consider this evidence when reassessing current policies regarding participation of transgender women in the female category of sport.”

The Department of Education launched investigations of two educational institutions and an athletic association last week where Title IX violations have been reported. The investigations were announced pursuant to Trump’s executive order.

The three entities subject to the probe are San Jose State University, the University of Pennsylvania, and the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association.

Paula Scanlan, former University of Pennsylvania women’s swimming and diving athlete, said in a Feb. 6 statement that she was “deeply grateful to the Department of Education for addressing Title IX violations concerning female athletes with such seriousness.”

As a swimmer “who was forced to compete against and share a locker room with a male athlete, I look forward to them holding accountable the higher education institutions that promoted this,” Scanlan said.