In January 2025, the House of Representatives passed a bill to bar transgender women from participating in school-based athletics. The bill was narrowly approved, with 218 votes for and 206 votes against the federal defunding of K-12 schools with transgender athletic inclusion policies. There was a collection of politically charged arguments for either side of this bill, however, an accurate analysis and judgment of these arguments requires educating ourselves on the history of the social justice movement for transgender female athletes.
Let’s start with ophthalmologist and professional tennis player Renée Richards. Shortly after competing on the men’s U.S. Open circuit in 1955 and 1957, Dr. Richards realized that her struggles with gender identity were not mental illness as suggested by the stigmatized views of a 1960s American society. In 1975, Dr. Richards underwent gender reassignment surgery and began playing in recreational tennis tournaments with no intentions of competing at the professional level.
Dr. Richards’ plans changed in 1976 when the United States Tennis Association (USTA) introduced chromosome tests to prohibit her from competing professionally. This resulted in a lengthy legal battle, which ultimately ended in favor of Dr. Richards after Billie Jean King testified that Dr. Richards posed no physical superiority to her opponents. The following year, Dr. Richards competed in the 1977 Women’s U.S. Open, where she did not dominate the competition or alter the skill required to excel at the game, but she did pioneer a journey toward unprecedented inclusion for transgender female athletes.
Over two decades later, a more permanent shift occurred in the rules and regulations surrounding transgender female athletes on the Olympic level. Before the USTA implemented the chromosome test to bar Dr. Richards from entering the women’s circuit, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) had enacted the use of a gender verification test in 1968 to prohibit men from competing in the women’s category.
In 2003, the IOC revised its criteria to align with the World Athletics guidelines, allowing athletes who had transitioned — including sex reassignment surgery, hormonal treatment and legal recognition of newly assigned sex — to compete in the Olympic games, given these changes were in place for a sufficient amount of time (at least two years) to minimize physical advantages. This policy was altered in 2012 when an amendment was added to regulate the testosterone levels of those competing in women’s events.
Although these policy changes opened doors for some transgender athletes to compete at the global level, there was still room for pioneers, such as Kristen Worley, to further redefine the presence of transgender athletes in female sports.
In 2015, Canadian cyclist Kristen Worley filed a lawsuit against the IOC that sought to remove the requirement for gender reassignment surgery, arguing that the procedure violated her rights and provided no physical advantage in competition. In 2017, Worley won the case by presenting updated scientific evidence that sex reassignment surgery was largely unnecessary, as the required testosterone levels could be achieved through hormone therapy alone.
After Worley’s case, the IOC removed sex reassignment surgery from its inclusion criteria, transferred the responsibility for instituting inclusion regulations to the individual sport level and motivated policy revisions to lessen the policing of women’s bodies.
After the 2015 IOC revisions to inclusion criteria in sports, other institutions, such as the National Collegiate Athletics Association (NCAA), followed suit by implementing inclusive policies. Lia Thomas is another pioneering athlete who challenged athletic administration at the collegiate level. Thomas had begun hormone therapy in 2019 while competing on the University of Pennsylvania Men’s Swim and Dive team, before joining the university’s Women’s Swim and Dive team in 2021.
At the time, NCAA policies required one year of hormone therapy to compete on women’s teams. In 2022, Thomas became the first transgender woman to win an NCAA Division I title. After this event, many other NCAA women’s swimming athletes anonymously expressed frustration about Thomas’ biological advantages, as she won nearly every competition she entered.
As a result, a global swimming organization known as World Aquatics launched an “open” category for female-identifying athletes who were not assigned female at birth, but the category received no entries for the 2023 Swimming World Cup in Berlin.
Today, President Donald Trump and the House of Representatives have dismantled the framework established by the IOC and historically significant transgender female athletes through an order titled, “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports.” The NCAA promptly followed the order with a statement from NCAA President Charlie Baker on Feb. 6, 2025, supporting the “clear, consistent. and uniform” standards imposed by this bill.
One side argues that this order protects female athletes from competing and sharing private spaces with those of the opposite biological sex by reinstating fair opportunity in athletics. Meanwhile, the other side argues that this order violates transgender human rights by denying them safe and dignified participation in athletics while reinforcing the confines of gender-based identity.
Ultimately, the ongoing debate over transgender inclusion in women’s sports reflects a broader conversation about equity, identity and the evolving nature of athletic competition. As policies continue to shift at both national and global levels, the history of transgender female athletes serves as a crucial lens through which we can understand and challenge societal norms in both LGBTQIA+ social justice and women’s athletic visibility. Whether through legal battles, scientific advancements or changes in public policy, the conversation is far from over. As we move forward, educated and open dialogue will be essential in shaping the future of athletics for all competitors.