transgender

Transgender women athletes will be excluded from the Olympics beginning with the 2028 Los Angeles Games after the International Olympic Committee implemented a new eligibility policy on Thursday.

Eligibility for women’s competition will be determined by a one-time, mandatory genetics test, according to the IOC. The test requires screening through saliva, a cheek swab or a blood sample.

No woman who transitioned from being born male competed at the 2024 Paris Summer Games, and it is unclear if any transgender women currently compete at an Olympic level. The new policy, however, aligns with President Trump’s executive order banning transgender athletes from participating in women’s or girls’ sporting events in the United States.

The eligibility policy approved by the IOC is not retroactive and does not apply to recreational sports programs.

The IOC said in a statement that it “protects fairness, safety and integrity in the female category.

“Eligibility for any female category event at the Olympic Games or any other IOC event, including individual and team sports, is now limited to biological females.”

Until now, individual sports federations determined whether transgender women were allowed to compete in women’s categories, with the IOC providing only recommendations. Sports that placed restrictions on transgender athletes included track and field, boxing, swimming and rugby.

The IOC Executive Board approved the new policy after 18 months of study. It mirrors the guidelines approved by the World Athletics Council in June, determining eligibility for the female category through screening for the absence or presence of the SRY gene.

The IOC policy leans on scientific research that considers the presence of the SRY gene fixed for life and represents evidence that an athlete has experienced male sex development. Athletes who screen negative for the SRY gene will be eligible to compete in women’s sports.

SRY (which stands for sex-determining region Y gene) is found on the Y chromosome. In the cell, it binds to other DNA, leading to testis formation, according to the National Library of Medicine. Even men who lack Y chromosomes still have a copy of the SRY region on one of their X chromosomes, which accounts for their maleness.

Jane Thornton, the IOC medical and scientific director, last year presented to the executive board findings that transgender athletes born with male sexual markers retained physical advantages, even those that had received treatment to reduce testosterone.

Kirsty Coventry, a former gold-medal Olympics swimmer from Zimbabwe, was elected a year ago as the first woman president of the IOC. She campaigned on the importance of protecting the women’s category.

“At the Olympic Games, even the smallest margins can be the difference between victory and defeat,” Coventry said Thursday in a statement. “So, it is absolutely clear that it would not be fair for biological males to compete in the female category.”

The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights set a deadline Tuesday that sounds much like two earlier deadlines, giving San José State University 10 days to comply with a list of athletics-related demands or face enforcement action, including the termination of the university’s federal funding.

This is the third 10-day deadline issued by the OCR to SJSU, the first in January and the second having expired last weekend. All three concern the same case, that of a transgender woman who played on the school’s women’s volleyball team from 2022 to 2024.

A federal investigation was launched in February 2025 after controversy over Blaire Fleming disrupted the 2024 volleyball season. Four Mountain West Conference teams — Boise State, Wyoming, Utah State and Nevada-Reno — chose to forfeit matches to SJSU.

The probe concluded that SJSU’s policies “allowing males to compete in women’s sports and access female-only facilities deny women equal educational opportunities and benefits.”

SJSU pushed back, insisting it followed the law in allowing Fleming to play. SJSU president Cynthia Teniente-Matson wrote in a March 6 letter to the campus community that the university “vigorously disputes the conclusions that OCR reached. … Our position is simple: We have followed the law and cannot be punished for doing so.”

SJSU requested that the OCR rescind its findings and close its investigation. Instead, the federal agency redoubled its efforts, with the latest salvo a “letter of impending enforcement” issued Tuesday and accompanied by a statement from U.S. Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Kimberly Richey.

“We have provided SJSU with multiple opportunities to resolve its Title IX violations with common sense actions: separating male and female athletes based on their biological sex, keeping men out of women’s locker rooms and bathrooms, restoring rightfully earned titles and accolades to female athletes, and apologizing to the women forced to forfeit competitions to protect themselves,” Richey said. “Yet, SJSU remains obstinate, choosing a radical ideology over safety, dignity, and fairness for its own students.

“With today’s action, the Department is putting the university on notice: comply with the law or risk losing its federal funding.”

SJSU enlisted the support of the California State University system, which sued the Department of Education on March 6 to challenge its allegedly “lawless overreach” and block the federal government from cutting funding to SJSU if the school does not agree to a proposed itemized resolution agreement.

“Whether and under what conditions transgender women should be allowed to compete in women’s athletics has been hotly contested,” the CSU lawsuit said. “But this case is not about that issue. It is about the Department’s attempt to punish SJSU, even though the law in the Ninth Circuit has been and is clear. Under Ninth Circuit law, Title IX and the Equal Protection Clause protect transgender students from discrimination.”

Suing the Education Department “is not a step we take lightly,” Teniente-Matson said. “However, we have a responsibility to defend the integrity of our institution and the rule of law, while ensuring that every member of our community is treated fairly and in accordance with the law.”

An estimated two-thirds of SJSU students receive federal financial aid totaling about $130 million annually, according to Cal State University. Losing federal funds could also disrupt $175 million in research.

The Office of Civil Rights’ proposed resolution agreement, which SJSU dismissed out of hand, contains the following demands:

1) Issue a public statement that SJSU will adopt biology-based definitions of the words “male” and “female” and acknowledge that the sex of a human — male or female — is unchangeable.

2) Specify that SJSU will follow Title IX by separating sports and intimate facilities based on biological sex.

3) State that SJSU will not delegate its obligation to comply with Title IX to any external association or entity and will not contract with any entity that discriminates on the basis of sex.

4) Restore to female athletes all individual athletic records and titles misappropriated by male athletes competing in women’s categories, and issue a personalized letter of apology on behalf of SJSU to each female athlete for allowing her participation in athletics to be marred by sex discrimination.

5) Send a personalized apology to every woman who played in SJSU’s women’s indoor volleyball from 2022 to 2024, beach volleyball in 2023, and to any woman on a team that forfeited rather than compete against SJSU while a male student was on the roster — expressing sincere regret for placing female athletes in that position.

In a related lawsuit, a Colorado district judge this month deferred ruling on motions to dismiss former SJSU volleyball player Brooke Slusser’s lawsuit against the California State University system. Slusser alleged that she was made to share bedrooms and changing spaces with Fleming without being informed that Fleming is transgender.

Judge Kato Crews dismissed the Mountain West Conference as a defendant but said he wants to put the rest of the case on hold until after a Supreme Court ruling in B.P.J. v. West Virginia, which is expected to come in June.

The B.P.J. case went to the Supreme Court after a transgender teen sued West Virginia to block a state law that prevents males from competing in girls’ high school sports.

WASHINGTON  — The Supreme Court revived a San Diego judge’s order Monday and said parents have a right to know about their child’s gender identity at school.

The decision came in a 6-3 order granting an emergency appeal from lawyers for Chicago-based Thomas More Society.

They said the student privacy policy enforced in California infringes parents’ rights and the free exercise of religion.

“The parents object that these policies prevent schools from telling them about their children’s efforts to engage in gender transitioning at school unless the children consent to parental notification,” the court said. “The parents also take issue with California’s requirement that schools use children’s preferred names and pronouns regardless of their parents’ wishes.”

The judge’s injunction “does not provide relief for all the parents of California public school students, but only for those parents who object to the challenged policies or seek religious exemptions,” the justices added.

The six conservatives were in the majority, while the three liberals dissented.

Religious liberty advocates hailed the decision.

“Parents’ fundamental right to raise their children according to their faith doesn’t stop at the schoolhouse door,” said Mark Rienzi, president of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty. “California tried cutting parents out of their children’s lives while forcing teachers to hide the school’s behavior from parents. We’re glad the Court stepped in to block this anti-family, anti-American policy.”

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals had put on hold a late December ruling by U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez, who held that the student privacy rules enforced by California school officials were unconstitutional.

“Parents and guardians have a federal constitutional right to be informed if their public school student child expresses gender incongruence,” Benitez wrote. “Teachers and school staff have a federal constitutional right to accurately inform the parent or guardian of their student when the student expresses gender incongruence.”

Escondido public schoolteachers Elizabeth Mirabelli and Lori Ann West, who described themselves as “devout Catholics,” sued in 2023, and they were later joined by parents in Pasadena and Clovis.

The Supreme Court’s ruling refers only to the parents.

The parents who brought the case “have sincere religious beliefs about sex and gender, and they feel a religious obligation to raise their children in accordance with those beliefs,” the court said.

The court added: “Gender dysphoria is a condition that has an important bearing on a child’s mental health, but when a child exhibits symptoms of gender dysphoria at school, California’s policies conceal that information from parents and facilitate a degree of gender transitioning during school hours.”

“This is a watershed moment for parental rights in America,” said Paul M. Jonna, special counsel at Thomas More Society. “The Supreme Court has told California and every state in the nation in no uncertain terms: you cannot secretly transition a child behind a parent’s back.”

The 9th Circuit had agreed with the state’s attorneys who said the judge had misstated California law.

“The state does not categorically forbid disclosure of information about students’ gender identities to parents without student consent,” they said in a 3-0 decision.

“For example, guidance from the California Attorney General expressly states that schools can ‘allow disclosure where a student does not consent where there is a compelling need to do so to protect the student’s wellbeing,’ and California Education Code allows disclosure to avert a clear danger to the well-being of a child.”

In their parents’ rights appeal to the Supreme Court, attorneys said school employees are secretly encouraging gender transitions.

“California is requiring public schools to hide children’s expressed transgender status at school from their own parents — including religious parents — and to actively facilitate those children’s social transitions over their parents’ express objection,” they told the court.

“Right now, California’s parental deception scheme is keeping families in the dark and causing irreparable harm. That’s why we’re asking the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene immediately,” Jonna wrote in his appeal. “Every day these gender secrecy policies stay in effect, children suffer and parents are left in the dark.”

California state attorneys had urged the court to put the case on hold while it is under appeal.

They said the judge’s order “appears to categorically bar schools across the State from ever respecting a student’s desire for privacy about their gender identity or expression — or respecting a student’s request to be addressed by a particular name or pronouns—over a parent’s objection.”

They said the order “would allow no exceptions, even for extreme cases where students or teachers reasonably fear that the student will suffer physical or mental abuse.”

Feb. 26 (UPI) — A new Kansas law requiring transgender residents’ state-issued identification to reflect their “sex at birth” went into effect Thursday, immediately invalidating hundreds of driver’s licenses and birth certificates.

KCUR-TV in Kansas City, Kan., reported that people began receiving notices this week from the Kansas Department of Revenue instructing them to request new identification cards and birth certificates if they had ever updated the gender marker on the documents.

The requirement is a result of legislation known as SD 244 going into effect Thursday. It bans transgender people from using bathrooms that match their gender identity. It also gives citizens the ability to sue transgender people for $1,000 if they encounter them breaking that law.

Other states ban transgender people from changing the gender marker on their IDs, but Kansas’ new law also nullifies any changes previously made legally.

State Rep. Abi Boatman, a transgender woman, shared a copy of the KDOR letter dated Monday on Facebook on Wednesday. It said those receiving the letter will have their identification records nullified.

“Additionally, please note that the Legislature did not include a grace period for updating credentials,” the letter reads. “This means that once the law is officially enacted, your current credential will be invalid immediately, and you may be subject to additional penalties if you are operating a vehicle without a valid credential.”

In a separate Facebook post Monday, Boatman said each person who must change their license will have to pay a $26 fee for a standard license.

“Be sure to thank your Republican representatives for not only cancelling the driver’s licenses of 1,700 transgender Kansans but also making them pay for a new one,” she wrote.

“It’s a wild time when Kansas can erase human beings while simultaneously making $45,000 off of them.”

Kansas’ Republican-majority Legislature used a process known as “gut and go” to pass SB 244 earlier this month, The Guardian reported. It allowed lawmakers to replace the text of one bill with entirely new language and to bypass committee review and expedite the voting process.

Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly vetoed the bill, calling it “poorly drafted legislation,” but the Legislature overrode her veto with a supermajority vote.

Attorney General Kris Kobach, who supported SB 244, said in a Facebook post about the signing of the legislation that he was “thankful for Kansas lawmakers who stand firm on this.”

“No more confusion on official IDs — biology matters, and truth wins.”

After the passage, Anthony Alvarez, who works for Loud Light Civic Action and is a transgender man, said the new law deputizes citizens and gives them financial incentive to turn against transgender Kansans.

“Every aspect of my public life will be subject to policing — from when I show my ID to vote or go to the bank to when I want to visit my friends in their dorm room or when I was my hands before I eat,” he said in a statement shared by the American Civil Liberties Union in Kansas.

The ACLU said it plans to challenge the law in court.