The State Department is ordering officials worldwide to deny visas to transgender athletes who try to enter the U.S. for competitions.
This order, obtained by The Guardian, is particularly harsh as it could even place a lifetime ban on these athletes should their passport or visa information list their gender as something different than what they were assigned at birth.
According to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, this would be considered fraud.
“In cases where applicants are suspected of misrepresenting their purpose of travel or sex, you should consider whether this misrepresentation is material such that it supports an ineligibility finding,” reads the directive.
This note to officials issuing visas comes after Trump’s Feb. 5 executive order banning transgender girls and women from competing in athletic for girls and women.
Specifically referring to the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, the president announced that he would direct Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to reject “any and all visa applications made by men attempting to fraudulently enter the United States while identifying themselves as women athletes."
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem
It is unclear how many international transgender athletes are slated to attend the Olympics.
Past trans Olympians include New Zealand weightlifter Laurel Hubbard, who competed in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. And Quinn, a trans nonbinary Canadian soccer player, competed in the 2016 Rio de Janeiro and 2020 Tokyo Olympics. (Quinn was not out during the 2016 games, however.)
The International Olympics Committee has allowed transgender people to participate in the games since 2004, and when similar pressure was mounting in 2021, the committee issued a statement showing their support for the LGBTQ+ community.
“The IOC will not discriminate against an athlete who has qualified through their [International Federation], on the basis of their gender identity and/or sex characteristics,” their website states.
But as Trump’s sports ban took hold, it also has taken its grip at a national level.
Just this week, Pennsylvania followed suit on Trump’s executive order and banned transgender athletes from participating in school sports. Other states, such as Maine, have signaled that they may push back on Trump’s ban.
This bigotry extends beyond sporting arenas.
Trump signed a barrage of executive orders targeting the tiny percentage of Americans who are transgender. One order Trump signed targets trans youth, banning gender-affirming medical care for those under the age of 19. He also threatened schools over teaching “gender ideology.”
The convicted felon also signed an executive order effectively banning transgender people from the military.
However, in a statement to Daily Kos, the civil rights organization Lambda Legal said they’re ready to take the president to court on this front.
“Thousands of transgender troops are combat-tested, having been deployed to war zones and executed missions with distinction, many of whom are senior personnel with decades of experience,” Sasha Buchert, the director of Lambda Legal’s nonbinary and transgender rights project, told Daily Kos. “It will hurt unit cohesion because it will discriminate against otherwise qualified service members, sending the message that identity rather than merit is what is important and that some discrimination is acceptable.”
The legal group had one message for Trump: See you in court.
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