First on Fox: Just one day after Rep. Greg Steube, R-Fla., passed the Protecting Women and Girls in Sports Act She passed through the house Of representatives, he already has plans to introduce a resolution to further address the issue of transgender athletes in women's sports.
Steube will introduce a joint resolution alongside Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., which will call for National Collegiate Athletic Association To disqualify all trans athletes who compete as women. It would also call for the NCAA to create new policies that would prevent any future transgender males from competing as women, and push all of its member conferences to do the same, according to draft legislation obtained by Fox News Digital.
Unlike the Women and Girls in Sports Protection Act, this resolution would directly address transgender inclusion at the college level and would also affect schools that are not federally funded.
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Riley Gaines speaks at a news conference after the House vote on the Protecting Women and Girls in Sports Act at the U.S. Capitol on January 14, 2025. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
Steube's previous bill only states that it is a violation of Title IX for federally funded educational programs or activities to operate, sponsor, or facilitate athletic programs or activities that allow male individuals to participate in programs or activities intended for women or girls. .
But that decision could extend to private institutions that compete in the NCAA. The issue of transgender inclusion at the women's college level has been a prevalent political issue during the Biden administration, highlighted by controversies involving trans swimmer Leah Thomas in 2022 and trans volleyball player Blair Fleming in 2024.
The NCAA has empowered and protected transgender athletes in women's sports through its current policies.
NCAA President Charlie Baker He faced questions and criticism from Republican lawmakers over those policies during a December 17 congressional hearing. He repeatedly cited federal law and recent rulings of federal courts that made this possible.
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On President Biden's first day in office, he issued an executive order to allow and protect transgender inclusion in women's sports. During the hearing in December, Baker pointed to “five lawsuits in the last 18 months” that enabled trans athletes to compete against biological females. However, there have been no rulings that explicitly instructed the NCAA to allow transgender athletes to compete against females or share women's locker rooms.
If Steube's bill becomes law, Baker and the NCAA would be tasked with enforcing the new mandates, just as he claimed to be enforcing previous mandates under Biden.
One group that lobbied heavily for this decision was Concerned Women for America (CWA), which has taken up the issue of trans athletes competing against women at the NCAA level as a core mission throughout Biden's term.
Current CWA legislative strategist and former NCAA women's athlete Missy Beatty told Fox News Digital that she tried to deliver a letter about the issue to NCAA Board of Governors Chairwoman Dr. Linda Livingston, but was dismissed and that Livingston “wouldn't even look at me in the eye.”
“The NCAA continues to fail in its responsibility to protect female athletes, and is the first leader to facilitate this discrimination. They have demonstrated a complete disregard for the safety and dignity of the athletes they govern,” Beatty said.
The NCAA may soon have to respond to a new set of rules once the Trump administration begins.
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Rep. Greg Steube gives a television interview outside the US Capitol on April 23, 2020. (Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
President-elect Trump He himself pledged to ban transgender athletes in women's sports as president during his 2024 campaign, and that became one of the key issues for him and other Republicans in their landslide victory in November.
The issue became so prominent that the Women and Girls in Sports Protection Act was the top priority of the 119th Congress, and passed the House of Representatives with unanimous support from Republicans and even two Democrats.
With a Republican majority in the Senate as well, both of Steube's proposals could be approved within Trump's first year in office.
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