The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has decided to officially ban trans people from female categories in future Olympic games. The new rule “Policy on the Protection of the Female (Women’s) Category in Olympic Sport” is slated to go into effect for the next Olympic Games taking place in Los Angeles in 2028.
Eligibility for future games will require invasive one-time gene-screening sex tests for participating athletes. These are meant to “ensure fairness and protect safety, particularly in contact sports,” the IOC writes. The Committee reports they appointed a working group to examine scientific, medical and legal developments concerning the issues since 2021. Group members were experts selected from five continents, specializing in endocrinology, transgender medicine, sports medicine, sports science, women’s health, ethics and law.
After gene-testing, any athlete who tests positive for the SRY gene commonly found in Y chromosomes will be considered ineligible to compete in women’s categories. PinkNews reports this will also be applied to intersex athletes who have experienced male puberty.
IOC President Kirsty Coventry released a statement on the decision saying “As a former athlete, I passionately believe in the rights of all Olympians to take part in fair competition.” Ironically, Coventry continued to say “every athlete must be treated with dignity and respect, and athletes will need to be screened only once in their lifetime.”
She claimed the policy is based on advice from medical experts. “At the Olympic Games, even the smallest margins can be the difference between victory and defeat. So, it is absolutely clear that it would not be fair for biological males to compete in the female category.”
The ethics of trans participation in sports has been fiercely debated for a number of years. NPR reports Laurel Hubbard was the first openly trans woman to compete in weightlifting in Tokyo in 2021. At the 2024 Paris Olympics contention arose over the questioning of the sex of female boxers, Imane Khelif of Algeria and Lin Yu-ting of Taiwan, who had both been formerly disqualified from the boxing championships after failing eligibility tests.
