The Virginia High School League announced Monday a ban on student-athletes assigned male at birth from participating in girls’ sports.
The league’s executive committee voted to bring the organization into compliance with President Donald Trump’s Feb. 5 executive order “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports” — a reversal from the organization’s initially published stance.
"Common sense wins! Today, the governing bodies for Virginia’s public and private high school athletics announced they would follow President Trump’s EO to protect girls sports," Gov. Glenn Youngkin wrote Tuesday in a post on X.
VHSL oversees 318 member schools throughout Virginia, with approximately 177,000 students participating yearly in sports and academic extracurriculars. (Athletes who play multiple sports are counted more than once.)
"The compliance will provide membership clear and consistent direction,” said VHSL executive director Billy Haun in a statement.
In a Tuesday interview with VPM News, Haun said VHSL will update its handbook and policy in the next few days.
It’s unclear how many student-athletes this change will affect, if any. VHSL data show five students applied during the 2024-2025 school year for waivers to play on teams that did not match their sex assigned at birth. That data did not list gender.
Prior to Monday’s announcement, VHSL’s rule for transgender student-athletes involved a waiver process for trans students who had undergone sex reassignment before puberty or met other requirements like hormone therapy. It was first implemented in 2014.
Haun added that from October 2020 to December 2024, there were 31 appeals or requests from trans athletes to play — 22 trans boys and nine trans girls. According to him, 28 of those appeals were granted and three were denied, though some of those athletes may have since graduated or are no longer participating in sports.
State Sen. Danica Roem (D–Manassas), the first openly transgender member of the Virginia General Assembly, told VPM News on Monday that courts have already blocked at least five of Trump’s executive orders.
“The way I kind of look at this right now is advanced compliance before all the legal maneuvering is done, and before courts have made their final decisions,” Roem said. “I think it is going to cause actual harm to the people who are most vulnerable right now.”
Last month, the Richmond Times-Dispatch reported that VHSL planned to keep its 2014 policy in place unless state or federal law changes. The president’s executive order stated that federal funding would be pulled from noncompliant schools, which Haun said Tuesday is a serious concern for schools.
“So we really felt like if we’re to be the governing body of the Virginia High School League, our policies need to be in compliance with the executive order so that our member schools and school divisions wouldn't have to choose between the league and the executive order,” he said.
Noncompliant schools could also risk violating Title IX — a civil rights law administered by the U.S. Department of Education. Trump’s executive order says allowing “men to compete in women’s sports” is “demeaning, unfair, and dangerous to women and girls, and denies women and girls the equal opportunity to participate and excel in competitive sports.”
