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NCAA 'Cravenly Caves' to Trump, Banning Trans Women From Female Sports
"Great fucking job, NCAA. You're now a part of Donald Trump's anti-trans hate machine seeking to push trans people out of public life and make their lives as difficult as possible," said one critic.
Feb 06, 2025
The National Collegiate Athletic Association announced Thursday that its board of governors voted to update the NCAA's participation policy for transgender student-athletes in response to Republican U.S. President Donald Trump signing an executive order intended to ban trans girls and women from competing on female sports teams
The NCAA is a nonprofit that regulates sports for 1,100 colleges and universities that collectively enroll more than 530,000 student-athletes. Its new policy says that "regardless of sex assigned at birth or gender identity, a student-athlete may participate (practice and compete) with a men's team, assuming they meet all other NCAA eligibility requirements."
However, the policy says, student-athletes who were assigned male at birth or assigned female at birth and have begun hormone therapy such as testosterone can continue to practice with women's teams but cannot compete with them.
According to The Hill, "Previously, the NCAA policy said transgender participation in each sport depended on guidelines set by the sport’s national or international governing body." NCAA president Charlie Baker, a former Republican governor of Massachusetts, recently told Congress that fewer than 10 trans athletes competed across the organization's three divisions.
Baker claimed in a Thursday statement that "President Trump's order provides a clear, national standard," and the organization's new policy "follows through on the NCAA's constitutional commitment to deliver intercollegiate athletics competition and to protect, support, and enhance the mental and physical health of student-athletes."
While Trump celebrated the policy update on social media Thursday, advocates for LGBTQ+ rights have forcefully criticized both the NCAA and the Republican president.
Responding to the NCAA's decision on the social media site Bluesky, Law Dork's Chris Geidner decried the "unbelievable depths of spinelessness with such cruel, unnecessary ramifications."
"Great fucking job, NCAA. You're now a part of Donald Trump's anti-trans hate machine seeking to push trans people out of public life and make their lives as difficult as possible," he added. "Charlie Baker, this is on you."
Jack Turban said on Bluesky that he was resigning from the NCAA Committee on Competitive Safeguards and Medical Aspects of Sports. The doctor told The Hill that he and other panel members were not notified of the board's vote before the public statement.
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— Jack Turban MD ( @turban.bsky.social) February 6, 2025 at 4:31 PM
"Trump and Republicans are picking out a tiny portion of the population, vilifying them, and stoking fear. That's dangerous and has real consequences,"
said Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) on social media Thursday afternoon. "I want to be clear: Americans do have concerns about fairness in sports, and it's important that we have those conversations and educate people about the facts. But actions like Trump's are not the answer."
"We should be focusing on the real obstacles that female athletes face, like a lack of financial resources and vulnerability to abuse. Instead, Republicans are attacking a group that represents less than a fraction of 1% of student-athletes," said Jayapal, who has a
trans daughter. "This is a manufactured crisis—one that serves to distract you from the fact that Trump and Republicans ran on raising wages and lowering costs, but have no real solutions to help you build a better life."
"They are trying to get you to look the other way. Don't," she added. "And to the trans community—I know this is all incredibly difficult. I'm so sorry that you have to go through this, but please know that I see you, I stand with you, and I will NEVER stop fighting for you. That's a promise."
The NCAA cravenly caves.
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— Nathan Kalman-Lamb ( @nkalamb.bsky.social) February 5, 2025 at 7:42 PM
The president's order is already having an impact beyond the NCAA policy change. As The Washington Post reported Thursday:
Trump's executive order directs the Department of Education to inform schools they will be violating Title IX, the federal law banning sex discrimination in schools, if they allow transgender athletes to compete in girls' or women's sports. Under the law, schools that discriminate based on sex are not eligible for federal funding.
In response, the Department of Education earlier Thursday announced investigations into the University of Pennsylvania, San José State University, and a Massachusetts high school athletic association over reported Title IX violations. Pennsylvania and the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association are targeted for allowing transgender students to play on a women's swimming team and girls' high school basketball team, respectively. Several opponents of the San José State women's volleyball team forfeited games this fall because the Spartans purportedly had a transgender athlete on its roster.
The newspaper noted that the NCAA's decision came two days after former teammates of swimmer Lia Thomas filed a lawsuit in Massachusetts federal court claiming Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania, the Ivy League, and the NCAA violated Title IX by allowing Thomas to compete in 2022 championships.
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US Workers Are Rising From Dartmouth to Chattanooga
The spectacular resurgence of unionization across America—with the support and encouragement of Biden’s National Labor Relations Board—is occurring under the national radar.
Feb 08, 2024
I did not star on the Dartmouth basketball team when I attended that ivy-clad institution, but I never imagined its basketball team might become the first unionized sports program in the country.
You heard me right. The institution that gave us Dinesh D’Souza, Ben Hart, Laura Ingraham, and “Animal House” (as well as yours truly) is on the way to making union history.
In September, all 15 players on Dartmouth’s varsity basketball team signed and filed a petition with the National Labor Relations Board to unionize (with the Service Employees International Union).
Workers are tractable no longer.
On October 5, Dartmouth’s lawyers responded by arguing that the players did not have the right to collectively bargain because, as members of the Ivy League, they received no athletic scholarships and the program lost money each year.
The National Labor Relations Board’s regional director in Boston, Laura Sacks, just ruled that because Dartmouth has “the right to control the work” of the team and because the team does that work “in exchange for compensation” like equipment and game tickets, the players are “employees” under the National Labor Relations Act.
This ruling now allows the team to take a vote that could make it the nation’s first unionized college sports program.
For years now, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) and its member schools have resisted moves by college athletes to unionize—defending the “student-athlete” model that has come under increasing fire from judges, labor activists, and elected officials.
But the National Labor Relations Board, under President Joe Biden, has signaled support for unionization efforts among college athletes.
In September 2021, Jennifer A. Abruzzo, the general counsel of the board, said college athletes should be considered employees under federal labor law—citing the Supreme Court’s ruling that year that college sports was a profitable enterprise, and argued that classifying them simply as “student-athletes” would lead to a “chilling effect” on organization efforts at collegiate programs.
Meanwhile, in a move almost as improbable as the unionization of Dartmouth’s basketball team, the United Auto Workers’ effort to organize 4,100 autoworkers at Volkswagen’s Chattanooga, Tennessee, assembly plant appears to be paying off.
The UAW said on Tuesday that a majority of workers have signed cards to join the union, so the union is now setting its sights on securing 70% of their votes before filing for an election with the National Labor Relations Board.
The UAW is on a roll. After successful negotiations this fall with General Motors, Ford, and Stellantis that netted UAW members a 25% pay raise, the union is expanding its reach with campaigns at VW, Toyota, Tesla, Honda, Mercedes, Volvo, Nissan, Subaru, Mazda, Rivian Lucid, and Hyundai. (More than 30% of autoworkers at the Montgomery, Alabama, Hyundai plant have already signed union cards.)
The spectacular resurgence of unionization across America—with the support and encouragement of Biden’s National Labor Relations Board—is occurring under the national radar. The mainstream media is barely reporting on it.
But it’s hugely important. And it’s coming at exactly the right time. Across America, support for unions is at its highest in 50 years, according to available polling.
That support is especially strong among young people, whether they’re Dartmouth basketball players or Starbucks baristas.
Support is also growing in places that had written off unions, such as southern “right-to-work” states and the corporations that fled to such anti-union enclaves in pursuit of tractable workers. Workers are tractable no longer.
About time.
The sharp decline of unions—from representing over a third of America’s private-sector workers in the 1950s and early 1960s to representing only 6% today—is largely responsible for the stagnation of non-supervisory workers’ wages, soaring income inequality, and an ever-angrier working class susceptible to Trumpian demagoguery.
At first glance, the unionization of a Dartmouth basketball team and of a VW plant in Tennessee might not appear to be reversing these long-term trends. But they signal a sea change.
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NLRB Opens Door for NCAA Student-Athletes to Unionize
A National Labor Relations Board regional director found that members of Dartmouth's men's basketball team are "employees" and ordered a union election.
Feb 05, 2024
"It's time for worker power in the NCAA."
That was the message from labor advocate More Perfect Union Monday after the U.S. National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) ruled that the student-athletes of Dartmouth College's men's basketball team are employees of the school with collective bargaining rights.
Refuting the New Hampshire school's claim that the players are not employees and that asserting jurisdiction over them would "create instability in labor relations," Laura Sacks, the NLRB's regional director in Boston, said in her ruling: "I find that because Dartmouth has the right to control the work performed by the men's varsity basketball team, and because the players perform that work in exchange for compensation, the petitioned-for basketball players are employees. Additionally, I find that asserting jurisdiction would not create instability in labor relations."
"Accordingly," she added, "I shall direct an election in the petitioned-for unit."
Last year, Dartmouth players petitioned the NLRB to organize with a local branch of the Service Employees International Union. Colleges and universities have been pushing Congress to enact legislation barring student-athletes from being classified as employees, arguing that being forced to provide pay and benefits and allowing them to form or join unions threatens their multibillion-dollar monopoly.
If the Dartmouth players choose to unionize, they'll be the first NCAA student-athletes to do so.
"The NCAA brings in $1 billion each year," More Pefect Union recently noted. "Its coaches are multimillionaires. Schools and TV networks are making fortunes. But most college athletes make zero, for the sole reason that the NCAA chooses to exploit them. It's time for this to change."
Dartmouth College said Monday that it would repeal the NLRB ruling.
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