The ongoing scrutinizing of transgender women and girls participating in women's sports has a new lawsuit attached to it. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has filed a suit on behalf of the state against the NCAA in order to "immediately begin screening the sex of student athletes."
The NCAA banned transgender women from competing in women's sports just one day after President Donald Trump signed an executive order prohibiting such matters in America. Trump's executive order forces the federal government to withhold federal funding from any school that allows trans women to compete in women's sports. The college sports governing body updated its participation policy to state that only "student-athletes assigned female at birth" will be allowed to take part in collegiate sports.
However, Paxton's lawsuit is effectively asking for hyper-specific terminology to be banned from use by the NCAA, as well as the screening of all student-athletes who identify as female. Paxton's new request is an addition to his lawsuit from 2024, which seeks a temporary injunction that would either mandate athlete sex screenings or prevent the NCAA from "falsely and deceptively claiming that only biological women may participate in female-specific competitions."
Paxton doesn't believe the NCAA's new policy update is enough.
"In practice, the NCAA's lack of sex-screening has allowed (and will continue to allow) biological men to surreptitiously participate in 'women's' sports categories," the lawsuit states. Additionally, Paxton lays out that the NCAA allows "ample opportunity for biological men to alter their birth records and participate in women's sports."
Texas' new lawsuit follows a previous suit filed against the NCAA in December, in which Paxton's office accused the regulator of "engaging in false, deceptive and misleading practices" by marketing sports events as "'women's competitions' only to then provide consumers with mixed sex competitions where biological males compete against biological females."
"That only biological women will compete in the events is an important reason consumers choose to support women's sports," Paxton claimed in a statementannouncing the suit. "By falsely marketing and selling competitions as 'women's' sports only to provide a mixed sex event, the NCAA violated the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act which exists to protect consumers from businesses attempting to mislead or trick them into purchasing goods or services that are not as advertised."
Experts note that the number of transgender athletes participating in NCAA sports is likely a statistically negligible amount.
OutSports, a website focused on LGBTQ issues and personalities in amateur and professional sports, has documented just 44 athletes who have come out publicly as transgender. In 2023, researcher and medical physicist Joanna Harper shared with Newsweek that the number of transgender women participating in NCAA sports is unlikely to exceed 100. The total number of NCAA student-athletes surpassed 522,000 in 2022, according to the regulatory body.
"While we don't know the exact number of trans women competing in NCAA sports," Harper said. "I would be very surprised if there were more than 100 of them in the women's category."
For the NCAA, there are no immediate changes to their rules slated on the horizon.
"Student-athletes assigned male at birth may not compete on a women's team with amended birth certificates or other forms of ID," the NCAA said in an emailed response to The Associated Press.
Of note, NCAA President Charlie Baker told a Senate panel back in Decemberthat there were "less than 10 transgender athletes" that he was aware of who currently compete in college sports.
Going forward, the impact of these rulings in lawsuits will likely have a trickle-down effect on young athletes.
"Research has also found that the mere existence of such policies has a chilling effect on girls/women's sports participation, especially for those who may be trans, gender questioning, non-binary, or masculine-presenting," said Dr. Kirsten Hextrum, an assistant professor in the School of Language, Culture, and Society at Oregon State University. "They report being fearful of scrutiny, surveillance, and hostile team climates, all of which push them out of sport. These findings are particularly troubling, considering girls/women still have about 1.1 fewer participation opportunities than boys/men across our youth sports."
https://www.chron.com/sports/college/article/texas-ncaa-transgender-athlete-lawsuit-20180245.php