What the NCAA says about transgender athletes amid the San Jose State controversy

By Andy Rose, CNN

(CNN) — The latest battleground in America’s culture war over gender identity will take place Saturday on a volleyball court in Las Vegas.

San Jose State University will play for an NCAA tournament berth in a season that has seen teams forfeit matches against the Spartans amid a federal lawsuit claiming one of its players is transgender.

The women’s volleyball head coach never considered sidelining the player at the center of the controversy, whom CNN is not naming because she has refused to comment through a university official; neither she nor her school has commented publicly on her gender identity.

“The university and I have made the decision that everyone certified to play volleyball on San Jose State will remain a part of this program until the end of the year,” Coach Todd Kress told ESPN.

Rules governing trans athletes’ participation are not the same for every NCAA sport. And scientific consensus remains inconclusive about the physical advantages of trans athletes, even years after a similar controversy over University of Pennsylvania swimmer Lia Thomas.

As the NCAA’s leaders and its members continue to debate the issue, here’s what the organization, with over 500,000 college athletes in all 50 states, says about transgender athletes:

The NCAA’s ‘sport-by-sport approach’

The NCAA enacted its first policy on trans athletes in 2010. That year, Kye Allums, a transgender man, became the first known trans player on an NCAA team in a major sport. Allums continued to play on the George Washington University women’s team as he transitioned.

Initially, the NCAA required that any trans female athlete must take hormone therapy for “gender dysphoria” for at least one year before being able to compete in women’s athletics.

It would be another 12 years before the NCAA made a major revision to its rules on transgender athletes. The 2022 policy is more specific about a testing regimen for players to determine whether their hormone levels are within certain standards.

The association also said it would take a “sport-by-sport approach,” allowing the national governing body of each sport to set its own specific standards. That left varied benchmarks across sports that can change without the input of NCAA member institutions.

Then-NCAA President Mark Emmert defended the decision at that time. “This policy alignment provides consistency and further strengthens the relationship between college sports and the U.S. Olympics,” Emmert said in a statement.

And it remains the organization’s current approach. “The Board of Governors discussed transgender student-athlete participation,” the NCAA said after a meeting this April. “The current policy remains under review.”

“Sport-specific policies are subject to ongoing review and recommendation by the NCAA Committee on Competitive Safeguards and Medical Aspects of Sports to the Board of Governors,” the association states on its website.

An NCAA spokesman told CNN on Friday, “There are no updates to provide at this time.”

Not everyone supports the status quo. The Independent Council on Women’s Sports is financing a class-action lawsuit against the NCAA over its policy on transgender women athletes. The non-profit advocacy group’s co-founder, Marshi Smith, has called on the NCAA to “release a policy that protects the women’s category.”

Smith’s organization hailed it as a small but notable victory when the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) announced this year it would effectively ban transgender women from competing in women’s sports at the 237 colleges under its jurisdiction, representing about 83,000 athletes.

“Only NAIA student-athletes whose biological sex is female may participate in NAIA-sponsored female sports,” that association ruled, providing exceptions only for practices and exhibitions.

A trans swimmer’s wins focused critics

Pressure on the NCAA over its transgender policies reached a key inflection point on February 17, 2022.

Lia Thomas, a transgender woman competing for the University of Pennsylvania swim team, captured the Ivy League championship in the 500-yard freestyle, beating her closest opponent by 7.5 seconds at the competition in Boston. A day later, Thomas also won the 200-yard freestyle, setting a new conference record.

Thomas had competed on men’s teams in high school and the first half of her college career. In keeping with NCAA policy, she took testosterone blockers and estrogen for a year before competing on Penn’s women’s team and submitted to lab tests to ensure her hormone levels were within the rules.

But Thomas’ stunning domination in Boston established a new battle line in the wider culture war.

Anti-trans activists cast Thomas as a villain, arguing her success was crowding out the achievements of cisgender women. Those pushing for acceptance of trans athletes in competitive sports argue there is no evidence showing transgender women have an advantage. And they say not allowing them to participate is illegal under Title IX, but they’ve had more difficulty arguing cases like Thomas’ were rare and of little relevance to the vast majority of cisgender competitors.

Thomas intended to keep swimming competitively after college, she told Sports Illustrated. But the rules of World Aquatics bar transgender athletes from competition unless they have not experienced biological puberty. The Court of Arbitration for Sport denied Thomas’ challenge to the rule, making her ineligible for most elite competitions, including the 2024 Olympics.

‘Unfortunately, there is a dearth of research’

The dilemma faced by the NCAA and other sports organizers is complicated by the lack of clear scientific consensus on whether transgender women, especially those who have experienced male puberty, have a natural physical advantage over cis women, even after extended hormone therapy.

And like cisgender athletes, trans athlete’s abilities vary.

A 2017 review in the journal Sports Medicine found “no direct or consistent research” showing trans people have an advantage. But it would be nearly impossible, experts say, to determine, for example, if a trans woman’s testosterone exposure before transition would offer a greater advantage than the height of a person born tall who studies show therefore could run faster or if a variant of ACTN3 or ACE genes might give an athlete an advantage for speed and strength.

One frequently cited 2020 review in the British Journal of Sports Medicine examining records of 75 people in the Air Force found trans women were 9% faster on average than their cis women counterparts, even after a year of testosterone suppression.

Another scientific review conducted in 2023 found athletic differences between trans women and cis women fade over the course of transition, arguing, “The exclusion of trans individuals also insults the skill and athleticism of both cis and trans athletes.”

“Unfortunately, there is a dearth of research on cis and trans gender differences,” added the author of that study, DJ Oberlin, in the journal Frontiers in Sports and Active Living.

Whether the NCAA is taking these or other studies into consideration as it reviews its policies on trans athletes is not clear. The association in April gave no details about what aspects of its policy are being reviewed, who is reviewing them, if that process will be public or when it might be finished.

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