Over 400 Olympic, College, and Professional Athletes Defend Transgender Inclusion in Women’s Sports in Open Letter to NCAA

The letter was signed by hundreds of current and former Olympic, professional, and college athletes. Sports leagues across the country are grappling with designing rules and restrictions around the contentious issue of trans-inclusion, while the NCAA is receiving pressure from some of its athletes for more restrictions on transgender participation.

“We, the undersigned, call upon the NCAA, a governing body meant to serve athletes and our wellbeing, to ensure that the lifesaving power of sport is accessible to all athletes who compete in championship and emerging sports at and for NCAA-member institutions – including transgender athletes,” the letter read.

“To deny transgender athletes the fundamental right to be who they are, to access the sport they love, and to receive the proven mental and physical health benefits of sport goes against the very principles of the NCAA’s Constitution,” said the letter.

“The NCAA’s most basic job is to protect the fairness and the safety of its athletes, and it has failed on that simple task,” Kaitlynn Wheeler, a former University of Kentucky swimmer said.

“Despite claims by those suing the NCAA over trans inclusion, studies used to justify the exclusion of transgender athletes are methodologically flawed and misinterpreted to further discrimination. In fact, the most current scientific review of transgender women in elite sport (published in 2022 by the Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport (CCES)) underscores that transgender women do not have an advantage over cis women in sport,” said the letter.

This victory caused a contentious debate to ignite among the public about the fairness and place transgender athletes have in traditionally sex-segregated sports categories.

“The new policy aligns transgender student-athlete participation with the Olympic Movement. The resulting sport-by-sport approach preserves opportunity for transgender student-athletes while balancing fairness, inclusion and safety for all who compete,” the NCAA said at the time.

States have been going back and forth on passing and repealing bans since then, with courts playing a role sometimes in blocking the implementation of legislation around the topic.

“Anti-trans legislation is largely fueled by propaganda and deception…Anti-trans politicians, policymakers, and media at large have divisively used this narrative to incite transphobic hatred and policy, despite the hundreds of swimmers who have stated their support for transgender athletes, endorsing the expertise of medical, athletic, and human rights professionals who helped shape the IOC’s inclusive policy,” said the letter.

“We implore you to focus efforts on developing policies driven by research, education, collaboration, and policy to promote a healthy and safe environment for all athletes, NOT discriminatory attempts to sideline an entire group of athletes from the sports they love,” the letter read.

This poll also found that 55% of Americans think that someone changing their gender is “morally wrong,” a figure that has risen from 51% when the same question was asked in 2021.

“Allowing even a single male athlete to compete in women’s sports takes numerous opportunities away from females,” Gaines said in an email to NBC. “The female athletes governed by NCAA policies do not accept this.”