A Colorado Springs-area school board voted Thursday night to ban transgender students from middle and high school sports teams that match their gender identity.
The 3-2 vote in District 49, a conservative-leaning district in El Paso County with 27,000 students, came after impassioned testimony from both supporters and opponents of the new policy, called “Preserving Fairness and Safety in Sports.”
The high-profile decision in Colorado’s 10th-largest school district follows a February executive order from President Donald Trump targeting transgender youth in sports and represents a shift that could soon be replicated in other districts in the state. But the new policy also raises the specter of a lawsuit over the ban and a host of questions about how the new rules will be applied.
Opponents of the policy say transgender students are at greater risk for bullying, isolation and mental health issues, and that denying them access to sports teams that match their gender identity will only exacerbate those problems.
Supporters say the policy protects girls from getting hurt by transgender players or losing out on playing time, wins or athletic scholarships.
Both sides seem to agree that transgender students represent a tiny fraction of team sports participants.
Starting next school year, District 49’s new policy will bar transgender girls from girls sports and transgender boys from boys sports. It’s not clear who will police the gender identity of student athletes.
In an interview earlier this week, District 49 Board President Lori Thompson said specific rules must be developed and suggested that a question about gender identity could be added to the required sports physical form.
She dismissed worries that surfaced during weeks of debate that the policy would mean school officials would be checking students’ genitals to determine which team they could join.
“That will not be happening,” she said at Thursday’s meeting.
But gender lines in school sports are already a bit blurry, highlighting potential inconsistencies in the new policy’s rationale that it’s unsafe for girls to compete with boys.
For example, while tackle football and baseball are considered boys sports, girls are allowed to participate and have done so at District 49 high schools, according to high school athletic directors in the district. In addition, wrestling is considered a co-ed sport at District 49 middle schools, with boys and girls competing against each other.
It’s unclear if transgender boys — people assigned female at birth who identify as male — will be barred from District 49’s boys sports teams, even as girls are allowed to play on those teams, or if girls will be barred as well.
In addition, it’s unclear how District 49 teams will handle competition against out-of-district teams that include transgender athletes: Will they play or forfeit?
For years, the Colorado High School Activities Association has recognized the right of transgender athletes to participate on sports teams that match their gender identity. But that appeared to change after more than 60 Colorado school and district officials, including Thompson and three others from District 49, sent the group a letter in April demanding it adopt rules “to ensure that boys are not permitted to compete as girls in girls’ sports.”
Subsequently, the activities association took a more noncommittal stance. At a recent event, the group’s lawyer described its position as “neutral” and said that determining eligibility for sports teams is a matter of local control.
At Thursday’s District 49 school board meeting, many district residents spoke out about the proposed policy.
A man named Kevin, whose children attended school in the district and whose grandchildren are now growing up there, said there’s no place for boys in girls sports.
“You can identify as who you want, but biologically, that’s the sport you play,” he said. “All this criss-crossing into sports, being in the women’s dressing rooms, bathrooms, and stuff like that, that’s a no-go.”
Holly Withers, the mother of two district students, said the policy seemed less about protecting fairness and safety and more about promoting an ideological agenda.
“Our students deserve schools that lift them up, not policies that single them out, and I hope that this board will choose to be remembered for leadership and not for extreme litigation,” she said.
Board member Mike Heil, one of two members who voted no on Thursday, said even if the policy is rarely used, it sends the message to transgender students that “we don’t value them.”
“I don’t think that’s who we need to be as a board,” he said.
Thompson, who voted for the policy, said, “If we don’t acknowledge physiological differences, women’s sports will cease to exist.”
But she also said she wants everyone to feel welcomed and included.
“There’s no way to make everyone happy,” she said. “That’s where you have to make tough decisions.”
This story was originally published by Chalkbeat, a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools. Sign up for their newsletters at ckbe.at/newsletters
Want more sports news? Sign up for the Sports Omelette to get all our analysis on Denver’s teams.
