Trump Admin Tells NCAA To Strip Records Of Male Athletes Who Competed In Women’s Sports

The Trump administration demanded on Tuesday that the NCAA strip the records and awards of the male athletes who competed in female sports at the collegiate and high school levels because of their transgender identity.

The Department of Education wrote a letter to the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) and the National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS) demanding that they take action to restore the awards, records, and titles that female athletes would have won had they not been displaced by male athletes who identified as female.

“The NCAA and NFHS should also immediately act to rectify the injustices that female athletes across the nation endured during the years that NCAA and NFHS policies promoted and facilitated men competing on women’s teams,” Deputy General Council Candice Jackson wrote.

The letter, written to NCAA President Charlie Baker and NFHS President Bob Lombardi, said that the Education Department would be enforcing Title IX to “hold educational institutions accountable for depriving female athletes of the awards, records, points, prizes, titles, trophies, announcements or other recognition assigned in favor of male athletes who were allowed to compete in female sports.”

This would mean stripping male athletes who identified as female, like University of Pennsylvania swimmer Lia Thomas, who won the women’s NCAA Division 1 championship in the 500-yard freestyle, of their accolades.

“Whether the number of records in women’s events attributed to men is 1 or 1 million, every official record of women’s performances must accurately reflect the achievements of female athletes, not of male ones,” Jackson wrote.

Riley Gaines, who competed against Thomas, and shared a fifth place result with him at the women’s 200-meter NCAA championships back in 2022, praised the Education Department.

“Restoring stolen athletic accolades to their rightful owners is a crucial step towards reinstating accountability, integrity, and common sense – one that I wholeheartedly support,” she said.

The letter also pointed to an executive order from President Donald Trump that strips funding from schools that force female athletes to compete with males and instructs the Education Department to enforce Title IX against schools that allow trans-identifying males in women’s sports or force girls to share locker rooms with males. One day later, the NCAA changed its policy to keep sports segregated by sex.

“While NCAA has amended its policy to state that a male may not compete for a women’s team, officially correcting the records is another critical step in rectifying the miscarriage of justice against female athletes allowed under the Biden Administration and giving female athletes the recognition they rightfully earned,” Senior Advisor for the Office of Communication in the Department of Education Julie Hartman told The Daily Wire.