SPORTS
Under Trump Pressure, College Ban Trans Athletes
Facing lawsuit from evangelical group, Betsy DeVos’s hostility, school guts inclusive policy
BY MATT TRACY
Franklin Pierce University
(FPU) in New Hampshire
is reversing its own
2018 policy that allowed
transgender women to participate
on women’s sports teams in the
face of invasive oversight from the
Trump administration prompted
by a complaint by a far-right, anti-
LGBTQ organization.
The school two years ago implemented
a policy opening the way
for transgender women to participate
on women’s teams, but only
with the stipulation that they had
completed a year of testosteronesuppression
treatment (the sort of
prying oversight that has sparked
criticism and legal battles on the
international stage when used to
target South Africa Olympic track
star Caster Semenya, who is widely
assumed, without substantiation,
of being intersex).
But after one of the school’s
transgender student-athletes,
CeCé Telfer, went on to win a national
title in the 2019 Division II
women’s NCAA Track and Field
Championships, FPU became the
target of the religious right’s discriminatory
focus on sidelining
such athletes from the playing fi eld
altogether in the name of women’s
rights.
Concerned Women for America,
an evangelical Christian group that
opposes LGBTQ rights — and uses
dehumanizing language to refer to
transgender individuals — fi led a
civil rights complaint with the Department
of Education, according
to the New Hampshire Union Leader,
prompting the DOE’s Offi ce for
Civil Rights (OCR) to determine
that the school’s policy is in violation
of Title IX, the landmark 1972
law banning sex discrimination
in federally-funded academic and
athletic programs.
The controversy blew up after
Republicans and religious conservatives
had already taken aim at
trans-inclusive sports policies in
Connecticut, where the anti-LGBTQ
Alliance Defending Freedom
and the Trump administration
CeCé Telfer’s victory in an NCAA Track and Field national championship competition brought the weight
of the Trump administration down on Franklin Pierce University’s trans-inclusive sport policy.
have aimed to undercut the Connecticut
Interscholastic Athletic
Conference’s policy allowing trans
student-athletes to participate according
to their gender identity.
The New Hampshire Interscholastic
Athletic Association, in contrast,
leaves trans student-athlete
eligibility up to individual school
districts.
According to the Union Leader, a
bill that would have banned trans
girls and women from participating
on women’s sports teams in
the state drew testimony earlier
this year from an attorney from
Republican State Attorney General
Gordon MacDonald’s offi ce,
who warned that such legislation
would violate the state’s anti-discrimination
laws. That legislative
effort subsequently failed.
Despite the kinds of conclusions
being made at the state level
in places like New Hampshire and
Connecticut, the Trump administration
has barreled forward with
a campaign to weaponize Title
IX against transgender studentathletes
under the guise of gender
equality in athletics.
In announcing its policy reversal,
FPU specifi cally cited federal
law, but has also indicated that
the change was driven by pressure
from the Trump administration.
“Franklin Pierce University regrets
that we must remove our
INSTAGRAM/ CECETELFER
previously published Transgender
Participation and Inclusion Policy,”
the school notes on its website’s
complianace page. “We remain
committed to an inclusive environment
for all of our students while
also complying with federal law.
Franklin Pierce University and the
Department of Athletics will continue
to support all students and
student-athletes.”
Schools that allow transgender
student-athletes to participate
in accordance with their gender
identity have been placed on high
alert in response to recent aggressive
actions from the administration
in Washington. Trump’s team
is threatening to withhold federal
funding for racial desegregation efforts
in Connecticut if schools there
do not fall in line and swiftly ban
transgender student-athletes from
sports teams. In June, the DOE determined
that the Connecticut policy
amounted to a violation of Title
IX under a transphobic argument
that the presence of trans women
in women’s sports discriminates
against cisgender females.
In a press release regarding the
FPU policy reversal, CWA linked
to a document outlining a resolution
agreement under which the
university agreed to comply with a
series of actions in response to the
Title IX complaint.
Among the points in that resolution
agreement, which was signed
by FPU president Kim Mooney, the
university pledged to rescind its
transgender inclusion policy by October
2 of this year and to provide
DOE with documentation showing
it will not utilize the rescinded policy
during the 2020-21 academic
school year. The required documentation
includes “any memoranda,
correspondence, agenda,
minutes, webpages, and/ or electronic
communication refl ecting
the University’s compliance with
this provision,” according to the
agreement.
DOE civil rights offi cials also
“may visit the University, interview
staff and students, and request
such additional reports or data as
are necessary for OCR to determine
whether the University has
fulfi lled the terms and obligations
of the resolution agreement,” the
agreement further states.
The language of the agreement
is premised on the false narrative
that cisgender girls and women
who are student-athletes face a
disadvantage by the mere presence
of trans women on their teams.
The document warns the school
to “not exclude from participation
in, deny the benefi ts of, treat differently,
or otherwise discriminate
against female students in any intercollegiate
athletics offered by the
university” — though, of course, it
mandates discrimination against
transgender females.
When reached by phone, Doreen
Denny, CWA vice president of government
relations, misgendered
transgender women and maintained
that cisgender women face
a “disadvantage” when competing
against “someone with clear physiological
advantages.” Even with
FPU’s policy requiring the testosterone
suppressing treatment,
Denny argued — without evidence,
“there is research that proves hormone
treatment therapy does not
mitigate the advantage” of trans
student-athletes.
She further said Telfer’s championship
victory “punctuated” that
➤ TRANS ATHLETES, continued on p.17
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