Fast-tracked new rule would undermine girls and women's sports
by Nancy Hogshead & Donna Lopiano
When Trump issued the Executive Order called Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports, no one was fooled into thinking he had become a late-blooming feminist.
So, no one should be surprised to learn of his administration’s devious new attempt to undermine the very female athletes he purports to support. But they’re trying to hide it from us. We must resist (yes, we submitted multiple complaints) and we must understand that the Trump administration is hoping to confuse people.
When girls choose to compete against boys, that’s one thing. When boys insist that they have a right to compete “as girls,” that’s quite another.
Girls Must Be Allowed to Try Out for Boys’ Teams If There Is No Girls’ Team
Let us explain. The Department of Energy (DOE) is trying to remove a Title IX regulation that requires schools to allow girls to try out – fair and square – for a boys’ team (excluding contact sports) if the school doesn’t have a girls’ team in that sport. The regulation in question provides an avenue for girls to play sports that a school designates as “boys’ sports” — without offering the same sport to girls. Currently:
- 4,094 girls play on boys’ high school football teams.
- 1,372 girls play on boys’ high school baseball teams.
- 9 women play on NCAA collegiate baseball teams.
- In 2024, 36 percent of men’s NCAA Division I heavyweight boats had a female coxswain. In lightweight and Division III men’s rowing, about half of all coxswains are female.
This is how girls’ wrestling – and other new sports for girls, including flag football – got started: with girls playing on boys’ teams.
Shamelessly, the DOE is weaponizing Trump’s Executive Order, which helps girls and women, to justify female exclusion, a policy that would hurt girls and women.
This dynamic will sound familiar to any female athlete. Depending on the circumstances, we sometimes choose to train with and compete against men. This is an accepted sports principle: athletes are generally permitted to “level up” – to compete in a more difficult category.
Athletes Are Eligible to Move Up a Level, But Not Down
For example: Lightweight wrestlers are eligible to compete in heavier weight classes. Nancy herself broke the American record for the 100-yard butterfly at the U.S. Swimming Senior Nationals at age fourteen — because she was fast enough to qualify for that meet. No one insisted she compete only against fourteen-and-under girls.
Only “moving down” to an easier category – such as a thirty-year-old entering an event restricted to kids aged fourteen and under – is forbidden.
Because males have greater muscle mass, larger skeletons, denser bones, greater strength and endurance, and larger lung and heart capacities, when women choose to compete against men it’s considered leveling up, and thus generally acceptable.
When girls and women want to level up and try out for boys’ noncontact sports, there is no reason they should not be allowed to. The federal government has required schools to allow girls and women to try out for these teams since 1975: a good thing.
At the same time, males must be excluded from female sports because of those physical differences. Otherwise, girls and women would not enjoy a fair playing field. Boys and men cannot move down to an easier category.
Trump Is Quietly Undermining Title IX and Female Opportunities
To remove the regulation – that schools must allow girls to try out for boys’ teams – the administration used an obscure procedure with a fast, 30-day comment period (which has now ended). Such procedures – Direct Final Rules (DFR) – are designed to be used for simple, noncontroversial, administrative adjustments, not civil rights issues. This one even has an Orwellian name masquerading its true male bias: “Nondiscrimination on the Basis of Sex in Sports Programs Arising Out of Federal Financial Assistance.”¹
Here’s the most disgraceful part: The proposed DFR takes the position that the current rules “ignore(s) the differences between the sexes which are grounded in fundamental and incontrovertible reality…” Shamelessly, the DOE is weaponizing Trump’s Executive Order, which helps girls and women, to justify female exclusion, a policy that would hurt girls and women.
It’s using male performance advantages to create more male advantages.
Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports says the policy of the United States is to “oppose male competitive participation in women's sports more broadly, as a matter of safety, fairness, dignity and truth.” But if this DFR goes into effect, schools could ban women and girls from playing innumerable sports by offering only one team for boys, with no corresponding girls’ team.
This directly contradicts the administration’s own purported commitment to fairness. Preventing girls from competing on boys’ teams will harm girls and women who are already part of boys’ and men’s teams; will deprive others who would have played on those teams; and will compound the inequities that persist 53 years after Title IX passed in 1972.
Fifty-Three Years After Title IX, Male Athletes Are Still Privileged
Most people understand that Title IX radically improved women’s sports opportunities, but few understand just how big the current gaps are between males and females. In 2023-24, high school boys enjoyed 1,215,268 more athletic opportunities than girls, according to the National Federation of State High School Associations. As of 2023, almost 93 percent of universities and colleges still discriminate against women in sports.
Colleges and universities need to provide an additional 225,568 sports opportunities to women to match the proportion of opportunities offered to men, according to research conducted by Champion Women. With an average team size of about 25 athletes, this equates to almost 9000 more women’s teams, or 4.4 more women’s teams per school.
Given these deficits, it makes sense that some girls would play on boys’ teams. The Department of Energy (and, more appropriately, the Department of Education) should focus on expanding opportunities for girls and women, not contracting them.
Female-only sports are essential. With the Women's Sports Policy Working Group, we have devoted the past five years to restoring female-only sports and intimate spaces.
But we must remain vigilant so that Title IX is not further weakened by an administration loudly touting their now-popular support for female-only sports and locker rooms, while stealthily sabotaging female athletes behind the scenes. The Trump administration is surreptitiously trying to weaken Title IX – and thus trying to weaken legal protections for girls and women. We must not let the administration remove our long-standing legal rights.
Nancy Hogshead, J.D., OLY, is CEO, Champion Women; civil rights lawyer; two-time Olympian; and three-time gold medalist and one silver in swimming. She serves on the U.S. Congressional Commission on the State of U.S. Olympics and Paralympics.
A Title IX sports pioneer, Donna A Lopiano, Ph.D. specializes in gender equity in the educational, Olympic, and elite sports spaces. She participated in 26 national championships in four sports and was a nine-time All-American in softball.
Both are members of the Women’s Sports Policy Working Group.
1 Nondiscrimination on the Basis of Sex in Sports Programs Arising Out of Federal Financial Assistance, 90 Fed. Reg. 20786 (May 16, 2025). This is an attempt to rescind the 1975 implementing regulation to Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 (Title IX), namely 10 C.F.R. § 1042.450.
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