The International Olympic Committee appears to be near a pivotal decision with wide-ranging consequences in advance of the 2028 Los Angeles Summer Olympics: Should athletes born male be allowed to compete in women’s events?
The debate comes amid a larger societal discussion about transgender athletes that has taken center stage in recent years, fueled in part by President Trump and others who are putting pressure on the IOC for a ban. The decision is being closely watched in California, where officials have tried to establish some protections for transgender athletes and pushed back against Trump.
Olympics officials are in a familiar position: trying to balance fairness in competition with inclusion. Bradley Anawalt, an endocrinologist and professor at the University of Washington, says those values conflict when it comes to transgender athletes.
“This is a topic that requires nuanced thinking and discussion,” Anawalt said.
There were reports this week that the Olympic committee was ready to ban transgender women in female competition. The IOC insisted that was premature but did not refute that a new policy was forthcoming.
A spokesperson confirmed that medical and scientific director Dr. Jane Thornton updated IOC members last week at a meeting in Lausanne, Switzerland, on the initial findings of a working group studying the issue. However, the spokesperson said in a statement that “the working group is continuing its discussions on this topic and no decisions have been taken yet. Further information will be provided in due course.”
New IOC President Kirsty Coventry succeeded Thomas Bach in June and three months later formed the Protection of the Female Category working group made up of experts as well as representatives of the international federation to study the issue.
The findings and a new policy could be announced as soon as the IOC session, scheduled in February ahead of the Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics.
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Under Bach, the IOC declined to apply a universal rule on transgender participation in the Olympics, and transgender athletes remain eligible to participate. Each sports international federation is allowed to set its own rules.
However, Coventry said in her first news conference after becoming IOC president that she believes Olympic sports should do away with the current piecemeal approach to setting rules on transgender inclusion and instead implement a policy that applies to most or all sports.
“We understand that there will be differences depending on the sport,” she said. “But it was very clear from the members that we have to protect the female category, first and foremost to ensure fairness.
We have to do it with a scientific approach and with the inclusion of the international federations who have done a lot of work in that area.
Trump signed an executive order early this year banning transgender athletes from competing in women’s sports in U.S. schools and said he intends to apply the policy at the Los Angeles Olympics in 2028. The order directs the secretary of state to attempt to change IOC rules on transgender participation and also directs immigration officials to refuse admission to transgender women from other countries for the purposes of sports participation.
Read more: California refuses to comply with Trump administration demand to bar female trans athletes
California Department of Education officials refused to comply with the order and are headed toward a court showdown.
Last month, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Assembly Bill 749, which created a commission to examine whether a new state board or department is needed to improve access to sports regardless of race, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, income or geographic location.
Republicans had urged Newsom to veto the bill, citing the gender identity provision.
Newsom has found himself in the center of the storm, saying on a podcast earlier this year that he thought it was unfair that transgender athletes participate in womens sports.
The most recent Olympics controversy over gender eligibility occurred at the Paris Games last summer when boxer Imane Khelif of Algeria won the women’s welterweight gold medal a year after being disqualified from the World Championships for reportedly failing a gender eligibility test.
The IOC allowed Khelif and Taiwan’s Lin Yu-ting to compete in the women’s division because their passports identified them as female. Yu-ting had been banned by the suspended International Boxing Assn. (IBA).
In an attempt to identify athletes raised as female but who sometimes carry physical advantages of males called Differences of Sexual Development (DSD) international boxing this year introduced mandatory tests for athletes in the female category to detect a gene on the Y chromosome that triggers the development of male characteristics.
Other sports have created a range of thresholds to ban or allow transgender athletes to compete as women. World Athletics, the international governing body for track and field, bans transgender athletes who have undergone male puberty. World Rugby forbids transgender athletes from competing at the highest level. And World Aquatics allows transgender athletes who transitioned before the age of 12 to compete as women.
Many experts agree that a significant competitive advantage between the two sexes doesn’t occur until after puberty, when males are stronger and faster than females as a group.
Very few transgender athletes have taken part in the Games. New Zealand weightlifter Laurel Hubbard became the first openly transgender athlete to compete in a different gender category in the 2021 Tokyo Olympics.
I dont think we need to redo all the work thats been done we can learn from the international federations and set up a task force that will look at this constantly and consistently,” Coventry said. “The overarching principle must be to protect the female category.
Earlier this year, the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee effectively barred transgender women from competing in womens sports.
That organization cited Trumps executive order, Keeping Men Out of Womens Sports, which among other things rescind all funds from organizations that allow transgender athlete participation in womens sports.
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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.