By: Jazzalin Grindle
Published: November 3, 2026
“I must tell you, we’re going to have to bring the Women’s Team.”[1]
This is what the current President of the United States said to the Men’s U.S. Olympic Hockey Team while inviting them to the White House after their gold medal win in the 2026 Olympic Winter Games, days after the Women’s U.S. Olympic Hockey Team won their own gold medal.[2] And yet, this administration claims to care about women’s sports—so much so that they want to keep transgender athletes out of the game for women’s safety.[3]
Early in his second term, President Trump issued an executive order to keep persons born male out of women’s sports.[4] This executive initiative triggered a sequence of attempts to limit transgender athletes from women’s sports.[5] Currently, the Supreme Court is deciding whether laws which limit participation in women’s sports based on biological sex violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.[6] An accurate Equal Protection Clause analysis will show that these sex-based regulations are a violation of Equal Protection rights.
Equal Protection Clause jurisprudence calls for three levels of scrutiny in its analysis; with regard to sex-based discrimination, the courts must apply intermediate scrutiny.[7] Intermediate scrutiny requires that (1) a discriminative measure based on gender must serve an important government interest, and (2) the classifications based on gender must be substantially related to achieving those goals to survive litigation.[8]
Across the nation, policies have been updated to limit participation in women’s sports only to athletes assigned female at birth.[9] From small town America all the way to the National Collegiate Athletic Association, after receiving the permission to go ahead after Trump’s executive order, rules have been enacted to ban athletes from women’s sports based on their sex at birth.[10] The people at the top of these institutions enacting these policies, whether local or with the federal government, claim their motivations are altruistic: taking special care to protect female athletes in women’s competitions.[11]
However, President Trump’s recent actions surrounding the 2026 Olympic Winter Games has shown this claim is not necessarily true.[12] By making the comment regarding having to invite the women’s Olympic team to the White House or risk facing impeachment, President Trump showed that the federal government does not care about women athletes, even those at the highest level.[13] To claim that the government wants to protect our nation’s women athletes, while simultaneously making snide comments about these women, shows the government’s true stance.[14] And when the government shows their stance—one that allows discrimination—it gives private organizations the opportunity to act the same.[15]
It is clear that it is not actually an important government interest to protect U.S. women athletes; but instead is the excuse the Trump Administration is using to cover up their transphobic ideals, harmfully discriminating against many citizens by limiting participation based on biological sex at birth.[16] So, when any litigation occurs regarding rules to limit participation in women’s sports based on biological sex at birth, the courts should find there is no important government interest in their discriminatory actions.[17] However, if the courts decide instead that there is an important government interest of protecting women athletes in these actions, the institutions’ methods of achieving this interest—whether through executive orders or regulations—will not pass the second prong of constitutional analysis.[18]
Discriminatory actions based on gender must be substantially related to achieving an important government interest.[19] Banning transgender athletes assigned male at birth, who now identify as female, from participating in women’s sports does not help achieve safety for women athletes.[20] Rather, these discriminatory regulations actively harm transgender women in sports. [21] Banning certain athletes from the women’s teams forces transgender athletes to either play on the men’s teams or stop playing the sport entirely, putting them at harm of facing undue violence.[22] These policies are also not making the drastic difference supporters claim they do for cisgender women, when in fact if the transgender athletes are taking hormones to transition, they act at the same level as cisgender women athletes.[23] However, if transgender athletes choose to play for the men’s teams, they could face potential harm, whether through the physical aggression during a game or emotional harm.[24] Thus, these actions to ban transgender athletes from women’s sports do not serve the important government interest they claim to and constitute violations of the Equal Protection Clause.[25] As made clear by our current President, the government doesn’t actually care about our women athletes, they just want to use this assertion as an excuse to enact transphobic policies.[26]
[1] New York Post Sports, President Trump Invites Team USA to the State of the Union in Postgame Phone Call, at 1:31 (YouTube, Feb. 23, 2026), https://youtu.be/gEoOswWDnkk?si=uwhbLIHuitUEW8iD.
[2] See Monica Alba & Megan Lebowitz, U.S. Women’s Hockey Team Declines Trump’s Invitation to the State of the Union, NBC News (Feb. 23, 2026), https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/us-womens-hockey-team-declines-trumps-invitation-state-union-rcna260299.
[3] Exec. Order No. 14,201, 90 Fed. Reg. 9279 (Feb. 5, 2025).
[4] Id.
[5] See e.g., Petition for Writ of Certiorari, Little v. Hecox, No. 24-38 (July 11, 2024) (hereinafter “Little Petition”) (arguing that males identifying as females are taking over women’s sports); Petition for Writ of Certiorari, West Virginia v. B.P.J., No. 24-43 (July 11, 2024) (hereinafter “B.P.J. Petition”) (questioning whether the Equal Protection Clause and Title IX prevent a school from designating boys’ and girls’ sports teams based on biological sex at birth).
[6] See Little Petition supra note 5. at 1 (identifying that the Court will decide whether these laws which claim they seek to protect women in sports violate the Equal Protection Clause); see also U.S. Const. amend. XIV.
[7] See Craig v. Boren, 429 U.S. 190, 197 (1976).
[8] See id.
[9] See NCAA Announces Transgender Student-Athlete Participation Policy Change, NCAA (Feb. 6, 2025), https://www.ncaa.org/news/2025/2/6/media-center-ncaa-announces-transgender-student-athlete-participation-policy-change.aspx.
[10] See id.; see e.g., Casey Martin, Small Town on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula Shows its Pride Following School Trans Ban, N.P.R. (July 24, 2025), https://www.kuow.org/stories/small-town-on-washington-s-olympic-peninsula-shows-it-pride-after-school-trans-ban.
[11] See Exec. Order No. 14,201, 90 Fed. Reg. 9279 (Feb. 5, 2025); see also Martin supra note 10 (detailing the anti-trans rhetoric the three school board members use in their personal social media accounts).
[12] See e.g., New York Post Sports, supra note 1, at 1:31.
[13] Id.
[14] Id.
[15] See id.; see also NCAA, supra note 9.
[16] See Exec. Order No. 14,201, 90 Fed. Reg. 9279 (misstating that the purpose is to protect women in sports).
[17] See e.g., Little Petition, supra note 6.
[18] See Craig v. Boren, 429 U.S. 190, 197 (1976).
[19] See id.
[20] See Megan Peterson, The Real Threat to Women’s Sports? It’s Not Trans Athletes, Gender Just. (Feb. 25, 2025), https://www.genderjustice.us/commentary/trans-athletes-are-not-the-real-threat/.
[21] See id.
[22] See NCAA supra, note 15 (detailing that participation in men’s sports is open to anyone regardless of sex at birth).
[23] See Peterson supra note 20 (explaining that after hormone therapy transgender women’s performance aligns with cisgender women’s performance).
[24] See id.
[25] See Craig v. Boren, 429 U.S. 190, 197 (1976) (stating that to survive a constitutional challenge classification based on gender must serve important government objectives and be substantially related to achieving these interests).
[26] See New York Post Sports, supra note 12, at 1:31.