Get the Facts on Sports Bans by Trans & Non-Binary Students

Transgender sports bans are regulations or laws that prohibit transgender and non-binary students, in most cases transgender girls, from playing on school sports teams alongside their friends in accordance with their gender identity. 

Traditionally, rules regarding who is eligible to participate have been set by the local sports association – which had the ability to make an individualized determination specific to the student, their age group, and demands of the sport – but in the last five years, state legislatures have enacted wholesale bans instead.  Many bans impact students as young as elementary school. Elite and professional athletics associations make their own rules and are not regulated by these laws that target schools. 

Enforcement of these laws often imposes burdensome and/or invasive requirements, including traumatic and age-inappropriate medical exams to examine “internal or external genitalia”, expensive and extraordinary DNA testing, bloodwork for hormone levels, or other ill-conceived and unscientific ‘gender’ tests. In addition to transgender girls being excluded, cisgender (non-transgender) girls in states with these bans have been accused of violating the bans because other players or their parents believed they were too talented, too strong, or too tall to be girls - and the harassment they have faced has in some cases made it impossible to continue to play.

The same forces that have always resisted equality for LGBTQ+ people (including marriage equality and non-discrimination laws) have turned their attention to transgender folks, particularly transgender youth.  Sports bans are part of a cruel effort by anti-LGBTQ+ hate groups like the Alliance Defending Freedom to further stigmatize and discriminate against LGBTQ+ people across the country. In fact, legislators have repeatedly been unable to justify the need for these laws, and admit that very few transgender youth even play sports.   

Proponents of these bans falsely suggest that transgender youth are pretending to be transgender in order to do well at sports or that cisgender boys will pretend to be transgender for the same reason. This assumption is not backed up by facts and ignores the real stigma transgender youth face. In addition, girls’ athletics programs are chronically underfunded, receive significantly less attention, and often are generally less respected.

Sometimes people who generally believe that transgender youth should be treated equally struggle with the idea of transgender youth participating in sports.  Often this is because they get stuck on assumptions that, when examined more closely, turn out to be based on inaccurate stereotypes.  For example, it may feel to some that transgender girls will have an inherent physical advantage in sports, but actually that feeling is linked to two fundamentally incorrect assumptions that bear closer examination. First, that transgender girls are, for relevant purposes, boys; and second, that boys are inherently more inclined to succeed at athletics (because they are taller, stronger, more mentally tough, or naturally more competitive) than are girls.  It may be helpful to wonder why transgender boys are not considered to be a threat to boys’ sports in the same way - likely because the underlying assumptions are that transgender boys are effectively girls and therefore will not be a threat to the boys they play with. Ultimately, these assumptions are just that - and they don’t capture the reality of the situation.

Natural variations in physical characteristics are an inherent part of sports, and this is especially true in school when young people are growing so rapidly.  Many of the bans preventing transgender students from participating in school sports govern play at elementary and middle school as well as high school when all youths’ bodies are undergoing tremendous change at significantly varying speeds.  Just as a cisgender (non-transgender) young person may reach their full height in middle school, and therefore be physically better suited to basketball and less well suited to gymnastics, a transgender youth may experience a temporary physical advantage while in various phases of their growth.   And, like all other youth, trans youth are short and tall, strong and not, fast and slow.  Breaking down these stereotypes also breaks down these arguments. Transgender girls are not new, and they’re not taking over girls’ sports. 

Playing sports comes with well-known academic, emotional, mental, and social benefits. That’s why we include athletic opportunities as part of educational programs - because sports help young folks learn important physical and social skills that benefit our society.  Transgender youth should not be shut off from these opportunities.  

Playing sports helps young people maintain good physical health, build self-confidence and self-esteem, grow leadership skills, understand the value of teamwork, and much more, according to the President’s Council on Sports, Fitness, & Nutritional Science. Prior research has found that student-athletes report lower levels of anxiety and depression, higher levels of self-esteem and self-confidence, and better grades and higher levels of academic performance. Both sports and extracurricular activity participation are associated with school connectedness, which in turn is associated with reduced risk behaviors, higher grades and graduation rates, and lower levels of suicidality and poor mental health.   

Transgender youth experience all kinds of mistreatment because of their gender identity, including bullying in schools, family rejection, threats of physical violence, and other discrimination.  Sports participation can help overcome some of this vulnerability. For instance, HRC’s analysis of the HRC Foundation/University of Connecticut 2022 LGBTQ+ Youth Study found that high school-aged transgender and non-binary student-athletes reported higher grades, lower levels of depression, and were less likely to feel unsafe at school than those who did not play sports. 

While some of the state bans that have passed in recent years regulate college athletics, all of them regulate educational athletic programs for younger students.  That means that transgender and non-binary youth are being denied access to programs their schools offer to enhance the learning and well-being of the students - except the transgender students. 

Numerous athletes at both the amateur and professional levels have spoken out in support of their transgender teammates and competitors - including longstanding advocates for women’s sports.  

These athletes include Women’s World Cup champion soccer player Megan Rapinoe, tennis icon Billie Jean King, Stanford swimmer Brooke Forde, NBA star Dwyane Wade, Canadian soccer phenom Erin McLeod, WNBA star Napheesa Collier, Dawn Staley, Head Coach of the NCAA National Championship winning University of South Carolina women’s basketball team, and many more. Additionally, sports organizations like the Ivy League, the College Swimming & Diving Coaches Association of America (CSCAA), and others have spoken out publicly to defend trans people’s presence in sports.

Other organizations who have spoken out in support include Women’s Sports Foundation as well as a coalition led by the American Association of University Women.