Flag on the play — the NCAA’s new gender policy won’t keep men out of women’s college sports, advocates like Riley Gaines allege.
The NCAA ostensibly barred men from women’s teams earlier this month after President Trump signed “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports,” an executive order disqualifying educational organizations that allow men to join women’s sports teams from receiving federal funding.
The NCAA had previously allowed men undergoing transgender hormone interventions to compete on women’s teams. Under these rules, Gaines, an NCAA all-American swimmer, was forced to compete against — and share a locker room with — Lia Thomas, a man.
The NCAA’s new policy forbids “males assigned at birth” from competing on female teams, but it only defines “male” and “female” as the “designation doctors assign to infants at birth, which is marked on their birth records.”
The vast majority of states allow birth certificates to be altered to a person’s “preferred gender.”
According to the Movement Advancement Project, a non-profit advancing gender ideology, only six states — Florida, Kansas, Montana, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Texas — allow no changes to birth certificates.
Most states, and the District of Columbia, will change a person’s sex on their birth certificate if they provide evidence of undergoing transgender medical interventions. Fourteen states — California, Idaho, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington — will make changes upon request, no questions asked.
In an article critiquing the NCAA’s “toothless” policy, Jennifer Sey, a former member of the U.S. National Gymnastics Team and the founder of XX-XY Athletics, argues that states are working to accelerate the birth certificate editing process to get ahead of rules like the NCAA’s.
She points to Governor Bob Ferguson of Washington State, who announced on February 12, “The [Washington] Department of Health will now process all requests to change gender designation on birth certificates within three business days. Previously, there was as much as a 10-month wait.”
“Hurrah! Now men can lie faster!” Sey opined.
An NCAA spokesperson tried to dodge criticism, telling Fox News, “The policy is clear that there are no waivers available, and athletes assigned male at birth may not compete on a women’s team with amended birth certificates or other forms of ID.”
But this language isn’t included in the policy — quite the opposite. The organization explicitly writes, “Schools are subject to local, state and federal legislation and such legislation supersedes the rules of the NCAA.”
Does this mean the NCAA will accept “edited” birth certificates from states that allow such changes? It doesn’t say. Nor does it take responsibility for verifying the authenticity of athletes’ identification, writing, in part:
The NCAA’s hands-off approach makes it easy for administrators to rubber-stamp “edited” birth certificates and allow men onto women’s teams.
In an interview with Fox, Gaines identified another glaring problem with the NCAA’s revised policy — it allows men who practice with women’s teams access to “benefits” afforded to female athletes.
“A student-athlete assigned male at birth may practice on the team consistent with their gender identity and receive all other benefits applicable to student-athletes who are otherwise eligible for practice,” the document reads.
An NCAA spokesperson told Fox the carve-out protects women’s teams that routinely practice against men, like basketball teams. But the policy doesn’t include any language forbidding men in these situations from accessing women’s locker rooms.
“No mater how you read it, men are still allowed to receive women’s benefits, which includes access to their locker rooms,” Gaines told Fox. “There’s no screening. There’s no oversight.”
Women deserve to compete in single-sex sports and change in single-sex locker rooms. That’s called equality. The NCAA purports to agree, but their policy doesn’t reflect the position it represents to the news.
If the NCAA truly wants to keep men out of women’s sports, it shouldn’t have any problem requiring athletes to present unedited birth certificates or forbid men on practice squads from accessing women’s locker rooms.
The longer the NCAA refuses to address these oversights, the more likely it seems they’re not interested in protecting women in their organization.
That’s a big problem.
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