By Ellen J. Staurowsky, Ed.D., Senior Writer and Professor, Sports Media, Ithaca College, staurows@ithaca.edu
In the aftermath of University of Pennsylvania swimmer, Lia Thomas, becoming the first and only transgender woman athlete ever to win an NCAA Division I championship in 2022, efforts to foster inclusive environments for a de minimis number of transgender girls and women in the U.S. sport system have been aggressively challenged in court rooms and in the public square. The issue of transgender women athletes became the focal point in the months leading up to the election of President Donald Trump in November of 2024, promoted with the aid of $215 million in TV ad spending. Fulfilling a campaign promise, President Trump signed Executive Order14201 titled “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports” on February 5, 2025. The next day, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) changed its transgender athlete eligibility policy, stipulating that athletes assigned male at birth as documented in their birth records are not eligible to compete on women’s team, regardless of their gender identity, although they may practice with women’s teams and receive medical treatment. Transgender athletes who identify as men are not prohibited from competing on men’s teams.
Just weeks before those steps were taken to exclude transgender women athletes from competing on men’s teams, the Texas state attorney general, Ken Paxton, filed a complaint against the NCAA in the District Court in Lubbock on December 22, 2024. In its original petition, the State alleged that the NCAA violated Texas’s Deceptive Trade Practices Act (DTPA) by “…engaging in false, deceptive, and misleading practices by advertising and selling goods and services associated with women’s sporting events that are, instead, mixed sex sporting events where men can compete against women” (p. 1). The State further alleged that consumers of NCAA women’s events were motivated by a desire to support women’s “empowerment” and “fair competition between women”. According to the complaint, these alleged deceptive practices result in women athletes being deprived titles, records, trophies, scholarships, and opportunities to win and consumers being deceived because they do not know who the competitors are. In its prayer for relief, the State sought a permanent injunction that would prohibit the NCAA from permitting transgender women athletes (referred to as biological males in the complaint) from competing in events within the state of Texas and/or on teams sponsored by NCAA members located in Texas. In the alternative, the State sought to require the NCAA to stop using the term “women’s” in association with its championships.
An amended complaint filed in February 25, 2025 after the NCAA changed its policy in a way that bars athletes who are assigned the designation of “male” at birth as documented in their birth records from competing on women’s teams continues to allege that the NCAA persists in an intention to “fool consumers” and has subjected consumers to “even more confusion, deception, and misleading statements” (p. 1). The centerpiece of the state of Texas’s focus is on the NCAA’s lack of a mechanism to certify women athletes as women through a “sex screening” process. The State sought a preliminary injunction that would have compelled the NCAA to subject all women athletes competing on teams sponsored by NCAA member schools, which would have impacted 233,662 women athletes in 2023-2024, to genetic testing. As the NCAA noted in its defense, such testing has never been done by school athletic associations in the United States. The specific test advocated by the State was the test for the presence of the SRY gene, a test abandoned by the International Olympic Committee in 1996 because of its flaws (Williams, 2025).
In rejecting the State’s request for a preliminary injunction on March 19, 2025, Judge Hatch noted “”Before I started delving into this lawsuit, I figured there was a test out there that was black and white, that was 100%, but I think if that were the case, that would have been included in the executive order. It’s just not there” (as quoted in Williams, 2025, para. 12). While the request for a permanent injunction was denied, this case is likely not over.
References
NCAA Board of Governors. (2025, February 5). Participation policy for transgender student-athletes: Effective immediately as of February 6, 2025. NCAA.org. https://www.ncaa.org/sports/2022/1/27/transgender-participation-policy.aspx
Parks, C. (2024,November 5). How a grandma became the focus of a ‘misinformed’ Trump ad on trans athletes. The Washington Post.
The State of Texas v. National Collegiate Athletic Association. (2025, February 19). In the District Court, Lubbock County, Texas, 237th Judicial District. CAUSE NO. DC-2024-CV-1835. https://www.oag.state.tx.us/sites/default/files/images/press/NCAA%20TI%20Application%20Filed.pdf
Trump, D. (2025, February 4). Executive Order: Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports. Washington, DC: White House. https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/02/keeping-men-out-of-womens-sports/
