NCAA president expects no changes to trans athlete rules after US supreme court ruling

Charlie Baker, the NCAA president, testifies before the Senate judiciary committee on 17 December 2024 in Washington DC. Photograph: Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images View image in fullscreen Charlie Baker, the NCAA president, testifies before the Senate judiciary committee on 17 December 2024 in Washington DC. Photograph: Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images NCAA president expects no changes to trans athlete rules after US supreme court ruling Collegiate sports organization led by Charlie Baker banned trans athletes from women’s sports after 2025 Trump order The president of the US’s top administrator of collegiate sports on Sunday said his organization does not anticipate adjusting its rules on transgender athletes after a recent federal supreme court decision allowed states to ban them from participating in school athletics. In an interview with CBS News’ Face the Nation, Charlie Baker, the NCAA president, alluded to how his organization in late January 2025 had effectively banned transgender athletes from women’s sports by closing off those programs to athletes who were assigned male at birth or were taking testosterone therapy. There are no restrictions for participation in NCAA men’s sports, which Baker referred to on Sunday as “the open network”. What to know about the US supreme court’s ruling on trans athletes Read more Baker recounted how the NCAA implemented that ban on trans athletes in women’s sports in response to an executive order signed by Donald Trump early in his second term. “We needed some sort of clarity around what the national standard for this would be – and we adopted and comply with the standard that was put forth by the administration,” Baker, the former Republican governor of Massachusetts, told Ed O’Keefe, a CBS senior political correspondent. “I think what happens at the state level is a different question.” Baker’s remarks seemingly nodded to how it is expected to have far-reaching consequences for the supreme court to have decided on 30 June to uphold laws in conservative West Virginia and Idaho excluding transgender girls and women from competing in female sports. Many female sports – including the collegiate, high school and lower levels – are governed by organizations that are not the NCAA . The prohibitions in Idaho and West Virginia furthermore were already replicated in at least 25 other states. View image in fullscreen A protester holds a sign at the Stonewall monument in Manhattan, New York, on 30 June in response to the ruling by the supreme court upholding bans on trans athletes in several states. Photograph: Neil Constantine/NurPhoto/Shutterstock And those states are likely to perceive the US supreme court’s 6-3 decision – from which the liberal justices dissented – as a green-light for their bans, though it remained unclear how it could affect ongoing litigation challenging laws in other places, such as California and Connecticut. The supreme court majority’s ruling essentially said that banning trans women and girls f