Colorado state sports association settles lawsuit by allowing schools to ban trans athletes

World Cup Pride Match in Seattle will feature… Egypt and Iran. Say what?

World Cup Pride Match with Egypt and Iran could be ‘good thing’

Despite the obvious challenges, Seattle FWC26 have indicated they will proceed with their plans for the Pride Match on June 26.

In a statement provided to Outsports, a spokesperson for the PMAC said: “The Pride Match has been scheduled to celebrate and elevate Pride events in Seattle and across the country, and it was planned well in advance.

“It is a Host City–led expression of Seattle and Washington State’s commitment to creating a welcoming and inclusive environment where everyone belongs: players, fans, residents, and visitors alike.

“Soccer has a unique power to unite people across borders, cultures, and beliefs. We are honored to host a Pride Match and to celebrate Pride as part of a global football community. This match reflects our ongoing commitment to respect, dignity, and unity for all.”

Eric Wahl, the brother of the late soccer journalist Grant Wahl, is a member of the Seattle PMAC. He is an advocate for public health and human rights, an out gay man, and a public speaker.

Following the fixture announcement, Wahl said on social media that the match-up of two countries where it is illegal to be gay is actually a “good thing” for the Pride Match.

City organizers do not want to pass up the opportunity to send out a strong message of welcome to LGBTQ people everywhere, having stated that with “hundreds of thousands of visitors and billions of viewers worldwide, this is a once-in-a-lifetime moment.”

Hedda McLendon is Seattle FWC26’s Senior Vice President of Legacy. She told Outsports that organizers are “working with small businesses so the region’s LGBTQ+-owned enterprises are ready to benefit from the tournament’s unprecedented visitor surge.”

Katie Wilson, the Democratic mayor-elect of Seattle who will assume office on Jan. 1, expressed similar hopes on social media after Saturday’s fixture confirmation. She referred to the Juneteenth and Pride themed matches, saying: “We get to show the world that in Seattle, everyone is welcome. What an incredible honor for our city!”

Last month, three finalists were announced for a Pride Match artwork competition, with the designs carried on the official SeattleFWC26 website.

Created by local artists from Washington State, the designs capture “Seattle’s identity as a diverse, inclusive community and a leader in LGBTQ+ rights,” according to organizers.

It is understood that the PMAC’s preparations are not being made in conjunction with FIFA. On a webpage carrying information about the Pride Match Design Contest, a disclaimer stated that the creation “is not affiliated with or endorsed by FIFA.”

Plans to celebrate LGBTQ Pride Month at a FIFA World Cup match are set to continue, even though the two countries selected for the fixture both have draconian anti-gay laws.

Seattle’s local organizing committee for World Cup 2026 has been preparing to stage a historic “Pride Match” at Lumen Field on June 26, the Friday of Pride Weekend. The themed fixture would be the first of its kind at a FIFA World Cup. The anniversary of the Stonewall riots is on June 28.

Friday’s tournament draw allocated the slot in the city’s schedule to one of two Group G games — New Zealand v Belgium, or Egypt v Iran.

The Pride Match would certainly stand in stark contrast to the Qatar 2022 World Cup, where the “OneLove” armband in support of diversity was banned by FIFA, and where some LGBTQ fans and allies had rainbow-colored items confiscated by security forces.

A few were even temporarily detained and harassed while being questioned about the items, including Grant Wahl. The journalist was told by guards to remove his T-shirt at a stadium and later reported on his distressing experience.

In recent days, a coalition of groups and organizations including the Sport and Rights Alliance has raised serious concerns about FIFA’s approach to human rights at World Cup 2026, including on the issue of LGBTQ safety.

As part of this, Athlete Ally ambassador Matt Pacifici, a former pro goalkeeper with Columbus Crew who came out publicly as gay in 2019, has criticized FIFA’s lack of anti-discrimination messaging at last summer’s Club World Cup tournament in the U.S. and also called for “enforceable protections” for LGBTQ players and fans.

Outsports has approached FIFA for comment, but by the time of publication, no response had been received.

December 8, 2025 0

Pro basketball team embraces homophobia, rejects the Pride rainbow

Parents demanded that a trans child be banned from sports. The town rejected their request.

House Republicans file bill to bar trans students from bathrooms, sports teams

New immigration policy bans visas for trans athletes: “Not in the national interest”

Trans woman swims topless at meet to protest being forced to compete against cis men

*This is reported by LGBTQ Nation

Anne Isabella Coombes, a 67-year-old transgender female swimmer, swam topless with her breasts exposed at the Cornwall County Masters swim meet as a protest to being forced to compete with cisgender men by Swim England, the UK’s governing body overseeing the country’s competitive swimming.

Swim England told Coombes she was no longer eligible to compete in the women’s category, despite her doing so in 2022 and 2023. So the organization placed her in a new “open” category where trans female and nonbinary competitors swim against cis men. Swim England replaced its men’s category with its open category starting in September 2023, to “negate… post-puberty transgender females[‘]… biological level of performance advantage post-transition,” the organization wrote.

“It is widely recognised that fairness of competition must be protected and Swim England believes the creation of open and female categories is the best way to achieve this,” the organization said upon announcing the new policy. “The updated policy ensures there are entry-level competitive opportunities for transgender people to participate in the majority of our disciplines within their gender identity.”

When Coombes asked what she’d be required to wear during swim meets in the “open” category, Swim England informed her that she would “need to wear a female swimming costume despite having to compete with the men, which ‘outs’ me as a woman who is transgender,” she told The Reading Chronicle.

“I explained to the person on the phone that they are not allowed to do that, and he didn’t have an answer,” she added, saying that the swimsuit requirement compelled her to stop competitively swimming until 2025. She only resumed in order to protest Swim England’s policies, which say that competitors’ swimwear must be in “good moral taste.”

She said the organization told her that she can swim in a men’s swimsuit without having to ask in advance for a referee’s permission, but that the referee can disqualify her if they choose.

“Deciding on whether exposing my breasts is in ‘good moral taste’ or whether I need to cover them up so that ‘those involved in competitive swimming are appropriately safeguarded’ is an entirely subjective decision of the referee,” she told the aforementioned company.

“In other words, I could turn up to the competition and run the risk of not being able to compete in whichever costume I intend to wear,” she continued. “No other swimmer has this concern. These regulations also mean that Swim England is treating me as a male by default.”

The Reading Chronicle didn’t say whether the referee disqualified her for her protest.

“I’m trying to show the world that this policy isn’t thought through, and it’s meant to hit trans people and nobody else,” she said. “I want to make it clear through this protest that trans people are not a threat when it comes to sport. We aren’t winning everything, and if we started to, then I would be first in line to discuss other options. Right now, it is a non-issue.”

Numerous competitive sports’ governing bodies have recently changed their policies to ban trans women from competing against cis women in the name of fairness — despite previously having policies that allowed trans athletes using hormone therapy to compete with members of their own gender identity.

Critics of these policies say that they mostly harm female athletes who could be subjected to invasive medical investigations in order to prove their gender. Critics also say that these policy changes add to social stigma that vilifies trans female athletes as a threat to women’s rights and do nothing to address the sexism, abuse, and lack of funding that actually harm cis female athletes.

Coombes said she has been protesting against the recent UK high court ruling that the legal definition of a woman under the country’s 2010 Equality Act is based on “biological sex.” Though the court has said that trans women still have anti-discrimination protections under the law, the UK Human Rights Commission said in a confusing “guidance” that trans women can be excluded from “women-only” spaces in hospitals, shops, and restaurants, and trans men can be excluded from “men-only” spaces.

Coombes has spoken at protests against the ruling and told the aforementioned publication, “Most trans people just want to get on with their lives and be treated as the gender they are. But unfortunately, given what the Supreme Court has done, we need to stand up and say ‘I’m trans, I exist, and you’re not going to silence me.’ Existence is resistance.”

June 18, 2025 0

Trump administration is using anti-trans orders to roll back sports opportunities for all girls

*This is reported by LGBTQ Nation.

The Trump administration is using its anti-trans actions to try to dismantle civil rights for both trans and cis women alike – and it’s taking an unusual route to do so.

The Department of Energy (DOE) is seeking to rescind the section of Title IX that says schools must allow students to play on sports teams with the opposite sex if there is no team for their sex available (unless the sport is a contact sport). The rule has allowed girls to play on boys’ teams in schools that don’t offer an equivalent girls’ team.

The DOE claims the policy “ignore[s] differences between the sexes which are grounded in fundamental and incontrovertible reality” and says eliminating it aligns with Donald Trump’s anti-trans executive order, “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports.”

The rescission of the rule would only apply to schools that receive funding from the DOE, which provides money to some schools for research and other programs, such as its Renew America’s School grant to assist with energy upgrades.

What’s more, the administration is exploiting a loophole to try to rush the rule change through without the standard 60-day public comment period. The DOE is using a process called a direct final rule (DFR), which does not require the formal rulemaking process but is typically used for simple changes, such as form updates.

The DFR process allowed the rule change to take effect on July 15 unless “significant adverse comments” had been submitted by June 16. Thousands of comments were submitted, though they are not visible to the public. It’s not clear whether the rule will officially take effect.

If the rule does change, it will not only affect trans athletes. Schools that receive DOE funding will no longer be required to allow cisgender girls to play on boys’ teams when a girls’ team does not exist.

Shiwali Patel, senior director of safe and inclusive schools for the National Women’s Law Center, told K-12 Dive the change is “blatant sexism, and harmful to women and girls.”

″The Trump administration is trying to gut long-standing Title IX protections that intend to provide women and girls with more opportunities to play sports, and without following the legally required rulemaking process, no less.”

Patel added that the administration clearly “doesn’t actually care about ‘protecting’ women and girls,” as it has used this claim to justify its crusade against trans rights, especially when it comes to trans student-athletes.

Julia Martin, director of policy and government affairs at legal and consulting group The Bruman Group, explained that the administration was able to keep the proposed rule change under wraps for so long because no one would have expected it to come from the DOE, as the Department of Education typically handles these kinds of policies.

The proposed change, in fact, was slipped into the middle of a list of 47 so-called “burdensome and costly regulations” outlined in a DOE press release in May announcing the department’s plan for a major overhaul to puportedly “save the American people an estimated $11 billion and cut more than 125,000 words fro the Code of Federal Regulations.”

“Part of what I see happening is this sense of overwhelm,” Kel O’Hara, senior attorney for policy and education equity at Equal Rights Advocates, told HuffPost. “There’s so much happening that it’s hard to follow. [The Trump administration] is trying to put these things through back doors, which makes it hard for the people who normally keep an eye on these things to catch it.”

O’Hara said the administration’s use of the DFR process is also worrisome for the future of other civil rights protections. “The really concerning part from my perspective is that this could essentially provide a blueprint for dismantling civil rights protections across the board.”

A second proposed rule change also seeks to rescind similar Title IX protections for education programs. The administration is also using the DFR loophole to try to push this change through on the same timeline.

June 17, 2025 0

A trans teen is fleeing the country after enduring years of hate for being good at track

*This is reported by LGBTQ Nation.

A teenage trans athlete is fleeing the country with her mother after experiencing severe bullying and harassment by right-wing media, fellow athletes, and politicians.

11th grader Ada Gallagher currently runs on the girls’ track team at Portland, Oregon’s McDaniel High School. She first became part of the national debate over trans athletes in 2023 when she won the state championship in the 200-meter race. A report from that time said the crowd met her victory with a chorus of boos, a sentiment that quickly spread across the country as the anti-trans right got its hands on the story.

Gallagher, who now competes with a security guard by her side, has endured years of death threats and vile insults, and she has also been a focal point of conservative media outlets.

Most recently, a video of Gallagher winning a March 19 400-meter race in a landslide was shared widely among conservatives. She also won the 200-meter race at the same meet.

Prominent anti-trans activist Riley Gaines – who has built an entire career off of tying for 5th place with a trans athlete three years ago – shared the video on X and misgendered Gallagher, writing, “Does he have no shame? Do his PARENTS have no shame?”

Gallagher’s mother, Carolyn, was not able to celebrate her daughter’s win like any mother should, as she knew the hate it would bring. She told Oregon Live she thought, “I know the optics of this are going to be horrible.”

But she wished people understood that the meet consisted of a total of three schools and that neither of the other two had strong competitors in the race Gallagher won so easily. She also wished people knew that, despite what Fox News claimed, Gallagher did not set a season record in the 400-meter race and actually ran a massive five seconds slower than she did in the same event at state the previous year, where she got second place.

For as long as she could, Gallagher tried to rise above it all, to keep her head in the game and just do what she loves: run.

But it has finally become too much.

“When they call me a predator, that’s the worst one. I hate it so much,” Gallagher told Oregon Live.

Only six days after Gallagher’s victory in March, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights began investigating Portland Public Schools and the Oregon School Activities Association (OSAA), alleging the organizations are violating Title IX by allowing trans athletes to participate in sports on the teams that align with their gender (OSAA policy states it “endeavors to allow students to participate for the athletic or activity program of their consistently asserted gender identity while providing a fair and safe environment for all students”).

A statement from Portland Public Schools Superintendent Kimberlee Armstrong in the wake of the lawsuit expressed a dedication to protecting vulnerable students.

“I stand firm in our legal responsibilities, and I deeply value every student’s right to be treated with dignity, safety, and respect. PPS is in full compliance with Oregon state law, which may differ from federal guidance. We are actively working with our legal and state partners to navigate this complex legal landscape.”

“While I am limited in what I can share at this time due to the sensitive nature of the matter and our duty to protect student privacy, I want to be clear: my commitment—and our district’s commitment—to doing what’s right for all students, especially those most vulnerable, remains unwavering.”

But Gallagher and her mother hope all the noise will quiet down once they leave for Canada, where Carolyn was born and raised, despite the fact that Gallagher is devastated to leave her team, her friends, and especially, her girlfriend.

As Oregon Live states, Gallagher “joined the track team last spring not because she believed she would win, not out of some desire to manipulate the system and compete where she could win, but because her friends urged her to. Because they wanted her there.”

Now the team captain, she says the team is “the only place where people really know me.”

“I think people think I want to be this spotlight for trans people,” she said. “Not at all. I just like running.”

While competing is what also leads her to endure all this hate, she said it all goes away during the 23 or so seconds she is running.

“You hear the feet around you hit the ground,” she said. “Senses are heightened. There’s nothing to think about, it’s just track.”

June 2, 2025 0

Indiana governor signs law banning trans women from collegiate sports

*This is being reported by LGBTQNation.

On Tuesday, Indiana Gov. Mike Braun (R) signed legislation banning trans women from playing on college women’s sports teams.

The law “prohibits a male, based on the student’s biological sex at birth in accordance with the student’s genetics and reproductive biology, from participating on an athletic team or sport designated as being a female, women’s, or girls’ athletic team or sport.” It also requires state schools and some private schools to “establish grievance procedures for a violation of these provisions.”

The legislation extends the state’s anti-trans sports policies that already exist for K-12 athletes. In 2022, the Indiana legislature voted to override then-Gov. Eric Holcomb’s (R) veto of an anti-trans sports bill, which banned transgender girls and women from participating in school sports. Holcomb claimed it was unconstitutional and addressed a nonexistent issue in the state.

In March, Braun also signed two anti-trans executive orders, one banning trans women from women’s sports at the collegiate level and the other declaring there are only two genders: male and female.

“Women’s sports create opportunities for young women to earn scholarships and develop leadership skills,” he said in a statement at the time. “Hoosiers overwhelmingly don’t want those opportunities destroyed by allowing biological males to compete in women’s sports, and today’s executive order will make sure of that.”

In a statement defending his executive order legally erasing trans and nonbinary identities, he touted the “scientific fact of biological sex” and claimed “replacing” that with “the always-changing, self-reported idea of ‘gender identity’ has real consequences.”

“Indiana will not go along with this radical new idea of what gender means,” he said, “and we will not allow tax dollars to be used to promote this ideology — instead, we’re going to focus on providing Freedom and Opportunity for all Hoosiers.”

The press release announcing the orders stated, “Indiana will not go along with the extreme gender ideology that created the problem in women’s sports in the first place.”

In reality, there is no problem in women’s sports, as there is only a record of a handful of out transgender college and K-12 students even participating.

NCAA President Charlie Baker told a Senate committee in December that he is aware of fewer than 10 transgender athletes among more than 500,000 student-athletes who compete in NCAA championship sports.

And reporting by the Associated Press in 2021 revealed that dozens of lawmakers who sponsored legislation to restrict trans athletes’ participation in school sports couldn’t cite a single example in their own state where trans athletes had caused problems.

Even more, a recent study found that trans women actually underperform when compared to cis athletes. The study confirms that transitioning presents various physical changes, such as a lower center of mass and fat distribution, decreased muscle mass and bone density, and lower blood oxygen levels.

April 19, 2025 0