On Thursday, just hours after President Donald Trump issued an executive order banning transgender student-athletes from participating in school sports nationwide, a high school league in Virginia said it will continue to allow transgender girls to play.

Trump’s executive order, one of more than 50 signed since he took office again on January 20, denies federal funding to schools that violate the ban.

Related

NCAA bans trans women from sports without even consulting its own doctors
Critics of the ban say it does nothing to actually protect women’s sports.

“We have not seen or received anything regarding the Executive Order,” Mike McCall, director of communications for the Virginia High School League (VHSL) said. “We will continue following the current policy and the current law in Virginia.”

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Trump’s order calls the inclusion of transgender athletes in school sports “demeaning, unfair and dangerous to women and girls and denies women and girls the equal opportunity to participate and excel in competitive sports.”  

The league’s decision contrasts with the abrupt announcement from the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) on Thursday that it had changed its policies to bar transgender women from women’s college sports to align with Trump’s order.

Unlike the NCAA, the Virginia league decided to stand by its rules as the implications of Trump’s order play out. Time and the mechanics of presidential executive orders are on their side.

Trump’s “Keeping Men out of Women’s Sports” executive order attacks transgender women and girls in three ways, and illustrates the limits of executive orders versus passing laws through Congress.

First, the order rescinds “all funds from educational programs that deprive women and girls of fair athletic opportunities.” Federal funding, which accounts for about eleven percent of all U.S. schools’ budgets on average, would be pulled from school systems in violation of the ban.

Those federal funds are distributed in different ways at the state and local level, complicating targeting a single school district or state association like VHSL. 

Second, the order tasks the Secretary of Education in coordination with the U.S. Attorney General to enforce the administration’s interpretation of Title IX, which they say doesn’t provide discrimination protections for transgender athletes. But the Supreme Court’s decision in Bostock v. Clayton in 2020 affirmed discrimination against someone because they are gay or transgender is sex discrimination under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

Trump’s ban or transgender women in sports will be challenged in the courts on that basis and others.

Third, the order calls for a lot of meetings on the issue:  to “convene” major athletic organizations and governing bodies “to promote policies that are fair and safe”; state attorneys general to “identify best practices”; and international athletic organizations to hear from “female athletes harmed by policies that allow male participation in women’s sports.”

Those meetings are more about marketing Trump’s anti-trans policies than enforcing them. They’re performative.

While Trump would like Americans, and his MAGA subjects in particular, to believe he’s reshaping the country by fiat, the presidential executive order is, in fact, not a tool to rule by decree.

Trump has had to walk back orders exceeding his presidential authority, like one freezing federal assistance programs mandated by Congress.

Some executive orders can take effect as soon as the president signs them, but many others are subject to delay pending agency review and new regulations, which can take months.

That’s time enough to challenge unlawful orders in the courts.

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