President Donald Trump signed an executive order Wednesday that threatens to withhold federal subsidies from K-12 schools that allow transgender girls to compete on women’s teams and launch investigations into those that don’t comply.
Trump signed the order at the White House surrounded by student-athletes, timing it to coincide with National Girls and Women in Sports Day.
“You’ve been waiting a long time for this. So have I,” he told the crowd.
The order is another effort from the president to roll back protections for transgender youth and adults, who in the past few years have been the targets of a growing number of restrictive state laws and school board policies.
About half the states have passed legislation barring transgender women from playing on school athletic teams that don’t align with their sex at birth. Other state laws govern which bathrooms and locker rooms transgender students can use at school and limit teachers’ ability to discuss gender identity in class. Many school boards have policies requiring that parents be notified when their children request changes to the name or pronouns they use.
On his first day in office, Trump signed executive orders declaring that the federal government would recognize only two sexes and making clear his Education Department would not extend protections under Title IX to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity at schools.
It is a marked reversal from the Biden administration, which sought to expand protections for LGBTQ+ students but faced legal headwinds brought on by Republicans. Opponents to former President Joe Biden’s attempts to issue more expansive regulations for Title IX contended that he was acting outside of his executive power.
Roughly 3 percent of high school students identify as transgender; 2 percent are questioning their gender identity, according to U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention data. Those students face higher rates of bullying and depression than their peers.
Transgender students are less likely than their peers to participate in school sports. Nineteen percent of transgender and gender-expansive youth reported playing sports in the Human Rights Campaign’s 2022 Youth Survey, compared with nearly half of all high school-age youth.
Under Trump’s new order, the secretary of education must prioritize civil rights cases against schools and athletic associations governed by educational institutions that allow transgender girls to play on girls’ teams. He directed the secretary to revoke funding to schools that don’t comply.
Beyond K-12 schools, Trump is also seeking to influence major athletic organizations and governing bodies—even the Olympics, which are slated to convene in Los Angeles in 2028. In the order, he directs his assistant for domestic policy to convene representatives from those organizations, alongside female athletes, “to promote policies that are fair and safe, in the best interests of female athletes,” and consistent with Title IX, the federal law prohibiting sex discrimination at schools that receive federal funds. He directs Secretary of State Marco Rubio to engage with the International Olympic Committee to ensure that “eligibility for participation in women’s sporting events is determined according to sex and not gender identity or testosterone reduction.”
During the White House signing event on Wednesday, Trump partially credited his return to the White House to his campaign promise to roll back transgender protections. Trump-aligned groups spent tens of millions of dollars on anti-trans advertisements during the 2024 campaign, according to the New York Times.
He said Democrats “look like fools” supporting transgender athletes, saying Republicans would keep winning elections campaigning against transgender rights.
“This will effectively end the attack on female athletes in K-12 schools, and virtually all U.S. colleges and universities. I don’t think we missed anything, but if we do, we’ll make it up very quickly with an order,” Trump said.
In a statement, the U.S. Department of Education’s deputy general counsel, Candice Jackson, said the department would follow his order and “prioritize Title IX enforcement against educational institutions that refuse to give female athletes the Title IX protections they deserve.”
The president made promises on the campaign trail to address what he on Wednesday called a “militant transgender ideology.”
The executive order order he signed on his first day in office that made it U.S. policy to recognize only two sexes directed the attorney general to instruct government agencies that civil rights laws that prohibit discrimination based on sex—such as Title IX—can’t be expanded to apply to discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity.
Other executive actions from the president have included orders seeking to halt federal support of gender-affirming care, and another kicked off a process to determine how to pull federal dollars from schools that “directly or indirectly” support students’ gender transitions—including referring to students by names or pronouns that may differ from their sex assigned at birth and not informing their parents.
The Biden administration last year issued regulations under Title IX to expand protections for LGBTQ+ students.
But in the concluding weeks of the administration, the U.S. Department of Education pulled back its proposed regulations on transgender athletes—which would have prohibited categorical bans on trans athletes’ membership on athletic teams that aligned with their gender identity—so that the Trump administration couldn’t steamroll the process for his own aims.
A Kentucky judge recently struck down the Title IX regulations that Biden did issue. The Education Department, under Trump, said it would resume use of the set of rules Trump issued in his first term.
