Wednesday, Trump declared “The war on women’s sports is over” when he signed an executive order banning transgender girls and women from competing in women’s sports.
The order titled “Keeping Men out of Women’s Sports” mandates the federal law banning sex discrimination in schools, Title IX, be interpreted to prohibit transwomen from playing in women’s sports. If schools do not comply with this mandate, they risk losing funding.
Trump’s mandate will be difficult to enforce, as the only way to prove a student is transgender would be to violate their privacy by demanding birth certificates, which can also be altered, or by inspecting students’ bodies.
Since the 1960s, schools and sports associations have attempted to tackle this issue, but after scandalous “nude parades” and gynecological exams were used to confirm the sexes of athletes, body policing methods have fallen out of favor.
If body policing were to be reimplemented, it would pose a massive threat to the health and safety of girls and young women in schools.
Chris Mosier, a transgender athlete and founder of transathlete.com, said in an interview with Reuters that, “increased scrutiny on athletes’ bodies creates serious harm to all women and girls who are perceived as ‘more masculine’ due to being queer, intersex, or otherwise out of alignment with narrow, white-centric norms of femininity.”
Trump and his Republican allies claim this order will protect female athletes from the unfair and unsafe conditions created by transgender girls and women competing against them, but this is a complete red herring.
This order is broadly sweeping, preventing transgender athletes from participating at even the youngest levels of play, despite the biological advantages boys have over girls not being a factor until the onset of puberty.
Trump does not care about protecting women and girls, he only cares about expanding his executive power. Transgender athletes have become a key target for Republican identity politics. By attacking this group who are broadly abhorred by his voter base, Trump can get away with overriding the checks and balances that keep this nation functioning.
The Executive branch’s responsibility is to enforce legislation, not create it, which is in the purview of Congress. Trump has gone over the head of America’s deliberative body and created policies through unconstitutional means.
Despite this lawless use of executive power, Trump will go unpunished because orders, like this ban on trans athletes in women’s sports, are wildly popular with the Republican majority in Congress.
The only way progressives can challenge these executive orders is through the courts, and while they have had some success at striking down unconstitutional mandates, Trump has simply issued too many orders to keep up with.
Trump is overwhelming the courts and the news cycles, essentially throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks. Not all his horrible policies will stand up to scrutiny, but what slips through could pose a significant threat to American democracy.
By consolidating power to the Executive branch, he is effectively turning this country into an authoritarian state, and just like infamous dictators of the past, he has selected political minorities, like transwomen, to attack so he may rile up support.
At the end of last year, NCAA president, Charlie Baker said that of 510,000 student athletes that play for their association, only ten are transgender.
Transwomen make up a very tiny minority and pose no significant threat to women’s sports and zero threat to American society, but Trump’s overreach of executive responsibility does.
This story was written by Joseph Schamber. He can be reached at [email protected].
