Now, There’s a No-Sports Order

Let’s kick it open, bounce it against the wall, and dunk on it.

Athlete by Pexels from Pixabay

Today, Donald Trump signed another anti-trans executive order. I’ve written about four previous executive orders. This is the fifth.

They’re threatening federal funding of schools

Appealing to Title IX, the half-century-old civil rights law that forbids sex discrimination, Trump says he will “rescind all funds from educational programs that deprive women and girls of fair athletic opportunities.”

Specifically, those that cause “endangerment, humiliation, and silencing of women and girls” and violate their “privacy.”

Very specifically, those that allow trans women to play sports as women.

The order doesn’t say whether or how to verify an athlete’s sex

The authors of this executive order interpret the inclusion of trans women as “requiring” cis women, playing “in the women’s category, to compete with or against or to appear unclothed before males.”

I’d like to imagine that their expressed concern about women having to “appear unclothed before males” could somehow be used to protect athletes from having to submit to sex verification. Alas, I…