Georgia University Leaders Urge NCAA to Ban Transgender Athletes in Women’s Sports

Demonstrators listen to the speaking program during a rally for the 50th anniversary of Title IX at Freedom Plaza in Washington, on June 23, 2022. Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

The regents that oversee Georgia’s 26 public universities and colleges on Tuesday voted in favor of a resolution urging the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) to ban transgender athletes from competing in women’s sports.

The Board of Regents voted to support a resolution that calls on the NCAA and the National Junior College Athletic Association (NJCAA) to update their student-athlete transgender participation policies to align with the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics’s (NAIA) new rules.

The resolution states that female athletes could be put at a “competitive disadvantage” when competing with athletes “who are biologically male or who have undergone masculinizing hormone therapy.”

Under the NAIA’s new policy, which took effect in August, only athletes whose biological sex assigned at birth is female are allowed to participate in NAIA-sponsored women’s sports.

The NAIA policy also states that female athletes must not have begun masculinizing hormone therapy in order to be allowed to compete in women’s competitions. Men’s competitions are open to all athletes.

The NCAA did not immediately return a request for comment.

In 2022, the NCAA issued new guidelines on the participation of transgender student-athletes in NCAA sports, which included three phases of requirements.

These phases included a continuation of the 2010 policy, requiring that transgender women complete at least one year of testosterone suppression treatment before being allowed to participate in women’s competitions.

More than 400 former and current athletes sent an open letter to the NCAA Board of Governors on Apr. 23, urging the board to allow transgender athletes to participate in NCAA women’s sports.

The letter stated that transgender sports ban is “largely fueled by propaganda and deception,” and that it “fails to address any of the real, documented threats to women in sports,” such as unequal pay, failure to uphold Title IX, and a lack of equal resources for men’s and women’s teams.

The federal government originally planned to release a new Title IX rule—the law bans discrimination based on sex in education—addressing both campus sexual assault and transgender athletes. Earlier this year, the department decided to split them into separate rules, and the athletics rule now remains in limbo.

In August, a group of Republican lawmakers sent a letter to NCAA president Charlie Baker, urging him to update the NCAA’s policy and follow the NAIA’s move to “protect women’s sports” and “promote fair play.”

The lawmakers stated in the letter that males possess “inherent athletic advantages” over females because of their anatomy and biological traits, including their differences in bone density and muscle mass.

“Women deserve that even playing field and chance to compete, one that can only be achieved by ensuring that only females compete in women’s sports,” the letter stated.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.