Today, NCAA President Charlie Baker issued a statement committing the NCAA to “align[ing] NCAA policy” with President Trump’s recently released executive order banning transgender girls and college athletes from participating in all types of athletic activities from the playground to elite intercollegiate competition. Lambda Legal Senior Attorney Carl Charles issued the following statement:
“Lambda Legal could not be more disappointed by the response issued by NCAA President Charlie Baker to President Trump’s February 5, 2025, executive order aiming to ban transgender girls and women from all school sports programs affiliated with institutions that receive federal funds—that is, the overwhelming majority of schools in our country. NCAA leadership says it “strongly believes” that a clear, consistent rule of excluding these students will “best serve today’s student-athletes.” It’s hard to fathom how this can be so. A “clear, consistent” directive to exclude based on disinformation only serves to reward ignorance and prejudice, and to inflict gratuitous pain. And make no mistake, the definition of sex in President Trump’s January 20 executive order, which is imposed by this sports order, is simplistic, scientifically erroneous nonsense. It ignores variations of human development, documented for almost a century, that are undeniable fact. And the core theme of this new order barring trans students from their schools’ sports programs is that they create danger for non-transgender girls and women. This is a pernicious falsehood.
“Blanket exclusions of vulnerable minority groups—driven by falsehoods and fearmongering—never serve anyone well. Not those ostracized and not the dominant majority either, as our country’s shameful history of other blanket exclusions based on falsehoods repeatedly has taught.
“The NCAA’s fast, wholesale embrace of this order is even harder to understand because the organization’s mission only concerns collegiate competition. The order, on the other hand, applies to all types of K-12 athletic activity—including kindergarten games, middle school track meets, high school scrimmages, college intramural tournaments, as well as elite intercollegiate competitions. No matter the sport and level of participation, deeming the participation of transgender girls and young women an unfair safety threat unjustly denies them the proven health, social, and relational benefits of sports participation that should be available for all youth, full stop.
“The NCAA’s apparently eager capitulation might be understandable given the heavy-handed coercion—blackmail really—by the President. But how fast and far this prestigious organization has fallen from its leadership in 2016 against North Carolina’s notorious anti-trans law, HB2, which was explained with similar smears. Then, as a sharp rebuke to the discrimination and fearmongering leveled by state legislators, the NCAA directed the relocation of its high-profile championships to another state. Now, less than ten years later, it offers an empty promise “to help foster welcoming environments … for all student-athletes,” while abandoning those who need that welcome most.
“We look forward to the day when the NCAA recovers its footing and is again able, per its mission, to “provide a world-class athletics and academic experience for student-athletes that fosters lifelong well-being” for all athletes, not just those who are cisgender. And for now, we applaud the informed voices of those organizations and the over 400 current and former NCAA, Professional, Olympic and Paralympic athletes who called on the NCAA last year to ensure that “the lifesaving power of sport is accessible to all athletes…including transgender athletes.”