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The Nebraska School Activities Association (NSAA) just approved a policy that will allow transgender athletes to participate in sports. The policy requires the transgender student to petition the school in order to participate in a sport and obtain approval from a NSAA eligibility committee. The eligibility committee will determine whether or not the student truly identifies as that gender. The policy also requires that the student provides documentation of at least a year of hormone therapy and asks transgender athletes to use bathrooms and locker rooms based on their biological sex.
The policy already faces resistance from people who are supporting an alternative proposal. The opposing proposal states that students should only be able to play based on the gender written on their birth certificate. If passed, the proposal will override the new policy, but Jon Cerny, the Bancroft-Rosalie Public School Superintendent, has already said that he will vote against it. We can only hope that other school officials will follow suit.
The new policy additionally leaves the decision of letting transgender students play up to the discretion of schools who might have religious beliefs that would otherwise exclude transgender people. This gives those schools the power to determine whether transgender students can play on a case-by-case basis.
While allowing transgender students play in school sports is certainly a step forward, the fact that they must appear before an eligibility committee to prove themselves is preposterous, intrusive and insulting. There is no way a committee of school officials could know better than the transgender student whether they truly identify as their gender. Hopefully, with discussions like these, eventually we’ll come to a day where transgender students don’t have to prove their gender to a school committee.
