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White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt responded to the news that the International Olympic Committee (IOC) updated its policies to ensure that only biological women compete in women’s sports and will use genetic testing as enforcement.
Leavitt credited Trump’s “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports” executive order for the change.
“You can’t change your gender. President Trump’s executive order protecting women’s sports made this happen!” Leavitt said.
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Trump signed the order last February, shortly after taking office. The order gives the Secretary of State the authority to use measures to get the IOC to change its policy to protect the women’s category.
“The Secretary of State shall use all appropriate and available measures to ensure that the International Olympic Committee amends the standards of Olympic sporting events to promote fairness, safety and the best interests of female athletes by ensuring that eligibility for participation in women’s sporting events is determined by gender and not gender identity or testosterone reduction,” the order said.
Last July, the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee (USOPC) amended its athlete safety policy to enforce Trump’s mandate, directly citing the executive order.
Then, when Trump announced the creation of an Olympic task force in August, Trump declared that “testing” would be used to enforce protections for women’s competition at the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.
“There will be a very strong form of testing,” Trump said when asked about the use of genetic testing on LA28.
In October, Chief Medical Officer Dr. Jonathan Finnoff said at the USOPC Winter Olympics media summit that the SRY gene tests used by World Athletics and World Boxing are “not common” in the United States, but suggested that the USOPC is currently exploring the possibility of using sex-testing options for its own teams and that he expects other world governing bodies to “follow suit.”
“It’s not necessarily very common to get this specific test in the United States, and so our goal with that was to help identify labs and options for the athletes to be able to get that test, and based on that experience, and knowing that some other international federations will probably follow suit,” Finnoff said.
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Now the IOC says it will apply the SRY gene test to every competitor in the women’s category in every Olympic event.
“Eligibility for any women’s category event at the Olympic Games or any other IOC event, including individual and team sports, is now limited to biological females, determined on the basis of a one-time SRY re-screening,” the new policy states.
The new policy has sent shockwaves through the ongoing American conflict over women’s sports
The US Supreme Court is currently weighing two cases related to policies for trans athletes.
The attorneys general leading the charge to protect women’s sports in those cases, John McCuskey of West Virginia and Raul Labrador of Idaho, reacted to news of the policy change Thursday.
McCuskey told Pakinomist Digital that he was “very pleased with the IOC’s decision to adhere to generalized common sense.”
McCuskey also credited Trump for his influence in the change.
“President Trump showed up. I don’t believe the IOC would be doing this if President Trump hadn’t taken a bold leadership position in this area,” he said.
While McCuskey awaits a SCOTUS decision on the case his state is fighting, he believes the IOC’s decision reflects the belief that the general public is on his side. McCuskey’s team made its oral arguments before the courts in January.
“I think it’s probably further evidence that even as we made our case, the underlying societal understanding of this issue is very different than the left thought it was,” McCuskey said.
Labrador said he looks forward to the decisions in his case.
“The IOC just announced that Olympic women’s sports will be limited to biological women starting in 2028. This is a huge step forward for fairness and safety in women’s athletics. I am proud that my office led the defense of Idaho’s law and did the same before the U.S. Supreme Court in January. We look forward to the court’s decision in our case this summer,” Labrador said.
Many prominent activists who have led the charge in efforts to protect women’s sports, including Riley Gaines and Jennifer Sey, have insisted that genetic testing would be necessary to enforce any policy change.
Some liberals are outraged
Civil rights lawyer Alejandra Caraballo expressed objection to the IOC’s policy on BlueSky and criticized the new genetic testing requirements.
“This testing regimen is inconsistent with basic human rights principles. And I’m not even talking about trans athletes. Only women will be subjected to this. They didn’t state who would pay for these tests that cost thousands of dollars. It’s make or break for athletes from poor countries,” Caraballo wrote.
University of New Brunswick sociology professor Nathan Kalman-Lamb tore into the new policy on BlueSky.
Trans rights activists take part in a protest against the ban on hormone blockers on April 20, 2024 in London. (Carl Court/Getty Images)
“The (obnoxious) International Olympic Committee just (f—ing) formally banned trans participation in sports,” Kalman-Lamb wrote.
“The IOC has just formally unleashed waves of further harm in the name of sporting ‘justice’. Sport can never justify the dehumanization this judgment calls for.”
Transgender comedian Stacy Cay spoke out on X.
“There were zero transgender women in the Olympics, but there are plenty of intersex women who are finding out that according to the IOC, they are not women. It’s going to be fun,” Cay wrote.
