South Carolina one of 29 states banning boys from playing girls’ high school sports

An analysis by Palmetto State News shows that, following President Donald Trump’s Feb. 5 executive order titled “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports,” South Carolina is one of 29 states following the order that bans biological males from playing on female sports teams.

Trump’s executive order directs the Department of Education to enforce Title IX based on biological sex and authorizes the withdrawal of federal funding from institutions that fail to comply.

The order by Trump reverses former President Joe Biden’s 2024 expansion of Title IX protections, which redefined “sex” to include “gender-identity,” and required U.S. schools and colleges to include males who identify as females in female specific spaces like locker rooms and bathrooms.

The governor of South Carolina signed a bill into law in 2022 that prohibits transgender students from participating in girls’ or women’s sports in public schools and colleges, joining other states that have passed comparable legislation in the last two years, according to NPR.

While 27 of those states have state laws which ban the participation of boys in girls sports, Alaska and Virginia ban it through state regulation.

As of publication time, there are 21 states that ban boys from participating in girls’ high school sports: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wyoming.

In April of 2023, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to overturn a lower court ruling that had blocked West Virginia’s enforcement of its Save Women’s Sports Act, signed into law in April 2021. The Fourth Circuit found that applying the law to a 13-year-old biological male who identifies as Becky Pepper-Jackson violated Title IX, which prohibits sex-based discrimination in federally funded education programs.

West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey announced in July of 2024 that his office filed a petition to overturn the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals’ ruling.

“We remain confident in the merits of our defense,” Morrisey said, according to the West Virginia Record. “We are resolute in protecting opportunities for women and girls in sports because when biological males win in a women’s event—as has happened time and again—female athletes lose their opportunity to shine.”

In December 2022, a federal appeals court rejected a challenge to Connecticut’s policy of allowing boys to participate in girls’ sports. A lawsuit was filed that year by three high school girls who argue the state’s policy deprived them of “honors and opportunities to compete at elite levels,” according to the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF).

“Girls deserve to compete on a level playing field,” ADF Legal Counsel Christiana Holcomb said in Nov. 2024 following a federal judge’s decision to let the case proceed. “Forcing them to compete against boys isn’t fair, shatters their dreams and destroys their athletic opportunities.”

A Reuters analysis of Medicaid findings shows there has been rapid growth in diagnoses of “gender dysphoria,” with 42,000 children and teens in the U.S. receiving a diagnosis in 2021—nearly triple the amount from 2017.

“Overall, the analysis found that at least 121,882 children ages 6 to 17 were diagnosed with gender dysphoria from 2017 through 2021,” Reuters reported.

A 2016 review in the Journal of Adolescent Health called children with gender dysphoria “singularly vulnerable” due to high rates of depression, self-harm and even suicide.

The American Psychiatric Association’s “Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders” says children are not fully capable of understanding what it means to be a man or a woman, adding that most questioning their biological sex eventually come to accept it and stop “identifying” as the opposite one.

The issue of gender dysphoria and school sports hasn’t been limited to high school. In March 2022, University of Pennsylvania male swimmer Will “Lia” Thomas won the women’s NCAA swimming championship in the 500-yard freestyle.

University of Kentucky swimmer Riley Gaines, who tied with Thomas in the 200-meter freestyle event at those NCAA championships, called Thomas a “cheat.”

“Lia Thomas is not a brave, courageous woman who EARNED a national title,” Gaines tweeted. “He is an arrogant, cheat who STOLE a national title from a hardworking, deserving woman. The NCAA is responsible.”

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who in April 2021 signed legislation banning boys from participating in girls’ sports, slammed Thomas’ participation in women’s events as an effort to “destroy women’s athletics.”

“The NCAA’s actions serve to erode opportunities for women athletes and perpetuate a fraud against women athletes as well as the public at large,” the proclamation read. “Florida rejects the NCAA’s efforts to destroy women’s athletics, disapproves of the NCAA elevating ideology over biology and takes offense at the NCAA trying to make others complicit in a lie.”

In response to a March 2025 letter from 40 Illinois Republican lawmakers, the Illinois High School Association (IHSA) said that it would not comply with Trump’s executive order, noting that the organization does not receive any federal or state funding and is therefore not subject to the order’s consequences, Prairie State Wire reported.

The IHSA framed its policy decision as a response to conflicts between state law and the executive order.

“The Illinois Human Rights Act requires that transgender athletes be permitted to participate in events and programs aligning with the gender with which they identify,” the IHSA’s letter reads. “As a result of the foregoing, compliance with the Executive Order could place the ISA out of compliance with the Illinois Human Rights Act and vice versa.”

“The IHSA’s decision follows an announcement by the U.S. Department of Education that it launched investigations into alleged Title IX violations at the Illinois Department of Education, Chicago Public Schools District 299 and Deerfield Public Schools District 109, where female, middle school students allege they were forced to undress in the presence of a transgender student in their locker room.