Trump’s Order on Trans Athletes Likely Targets 160 or Fewer Teens Nationwide

At the high school level, the answer is harder to pin down because policies vary by state, and sometimes by organization or county. To get an estimate of how many trans girls play on girls’ sports teams in high schools across the country, Teen Vogue reached out to athletic associations in each state.

In 23 states, either state law or the regulatory body over high school sports ban trans girls from girls’ teams, meaning there are no trans girls competing on these teams in more than half of states. Two more states — New Mexico and Utah — have rules that make it difficult, though not impossible, for trans girls to compete. Organizations in 14 states allow trans students to play but said they do not track how many trans athletes compete under their jurisdiction for privacy reasons. Four states and Washington DC did provide data, and though New Hampshire’s organization did not respond, outside reporting indicates there are likely two trans girls playing sports there because of a court order. The remaining states either did not respond or issued a statement without saying how many trans girls play sports on girls’ teams.

From the states that responded, Teen Vogue can confirm that there are 17 trans girls or fewer playing sports in those places — an average of two to three athletes in each place that tracks them. Since there’s no consistent state level data on how many high school trans athletes are actually in each state, Gillian Branstetter, Communications Strategist at the ACLU’s Women’s Rights Project and LGBTQ & HIV Project, suggests looking to college. Branstetter points out that trans athletes in the NCAA make up about 0.002% of the about 500,000 players. At that rate, about 160 of the 8 million athletes in high school sports would be transgender (which, by a rough estimate, is about the same as two to three athletes in each state).

Though Trump’s Order says it aims to “protect opportunities for women and girls to compete in safe and fair sports,” Noreen Farrell, executive director of Equal Rights Advocates, calls that disingenuous.

“While the administration claims this order ‘protects women,’ it actually serves as a distraction from the real, urgent threats facing young people across the country, including denied access to reproductive health care like abortions, bans on gender-affirming healthcare, and policies forcing schools to violate student privacy about LGBTQ+ status,” said Farrell in a statement emailed to Teen Vogue shortly after the Executive Order was signed. “The suggestion that we must exclude students to protect women’s sports promotes harmful stereotypes while ignoring the actual challenges facing women’s athletics, like chronic and discriminatory underfunding of women’s sports, recruitment, scholarships, and coaching.”

The map above is what we know about trans girls playing high school sports, broken down by state. States with no numbers either do not track trans athlete participation, or did not respond to Teen Vogue’s request. States where there are no trans girls playing sports largely ban them from playing. As each state and organization figures out how the Executive Order applies to it, this information may change quickly. We will do our best to keep up.