Virginia’s Board of Health took the next step in a regulatory process meant to restrict transgender athletes from competing in women’s sports or using certain facilities designated for women and girls.
On Thursday, the board approved to publish a Notice of Intended Regulatory Action that would create new regulations “to prevent biological males from participating in organized female-only athletic teams and competitions in Virginia, and to prevent biological males from using designated female spaces where females are likely to be in any state of undress.”
Gov. Glenn Youngkin subsequently issued an executive order Thursday directing the board to “heed the call of common sense and immediately take all necessary steps” to create the regulations.
“Students of both sexes have made high-profile complaints about both harassment from students of the opposite sex within intimate spaces such as locker rooms, which threatens the health and safety of students, and the inclusion of biological males in girls’ athletic competitions, which is a clear violation of Title IX,” Youngkin wrote in the executive order.
Thursday’s action is a first step in what could be a long regulatory process likely to stretch into the next administration. The notice needs to be published in the Virginia Register and will be subject to a 30-day comment period. The Board of Health will have to draft proposed regulations that would also be subject to review and public comment.
In August, the state board of health accepted a petition from three female athletes who claimed they had been “directly harmed” by transgender athletes, including losing to transgender women, discomfort sharing facilities and concerns about safety.
Earlier this year, the Virginia High School League reversed its policy on transgender athletes to follow a recent executive order from President Donald Trump. The order limited competition in girls’ sports to only include students assigned female at birth.
Before Trump’s executive order, transgender students could appeal to play sports on teams aligned with their gender identity. From 2020-2024, about 30 transgender student athletes submitted appeals to the VHSL to play on a sports team consistent with their gender identity, according to data previously provided by VHSL. About 27 of those appeals were granted. That’s out of 185,000 student athletes affiliated with VHSL, which governs more than 300 public high schools.
Youngkin’s order comes about a week after a federal complaint accused Fairfax County Public Schools of violating Title IX by permitting a biological male student to enter the girls’ locker room.
The question of whether to allow transgender athletes to compete in sports that align with their gender has become a political one during Virginia’s election season. Republicans in Virginia have taken the issue as a central point against Democrats.
One particular line of attack for Republican Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears points to her opponent’s time in Congress, when Democrat Abigail Spanberger voted in favor of the Equality Act, which passed in 2021. The bill prohibits discrimination based on sex, sexual orientation and gender identity, and specifically “prohibits an individual from being denied access to a shared facility, including a restroom, a locker room, and a dressing room, that is in accordance with the individual’s gender identity.”
Spanberger has said she’s in favor of an approach that allows schools to make case-by-case determinations on how transgender children participate in sports.
Eliza Noe, eliza.noe@virginiamedia.com