The NCAA's Punts on Transgender Student-Athlete Participation

The National Collegiate Athletic Association (“NCAA”), which serves as college athletics’s national governing body, states that its basic purposes include supporting and promoting healthy and safe college athletics. It accomplishes this through its stated principles, which include conducting athletics designed to protect, support, and enhance student-athletes’ physical and mental health and its commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion. These are tall tasks, as half a million student-athletes compete in NCAA-sponsored sports. The NCAA also enjoys a history of taking strong stances on perceived discrimination.

More specifically, the NCAA has used its economic influence to effect changes to state legislation or practices that it finds discriminatory. Recent examples include North Carolina’s so-called “bathroom bill” and Mississippi’s inclusion of the Confederate battle symbol on its state flag.