Former Olympic gold medal champion Caitlyn Jenner has come out in support of a New York county’s ban on girls’ and women’s sports teams that include transgender athletes from using the county’s public facilities, saying that transgender athletes should not be able to compete in women’s sports.
“Trans women are competing against women, taking valuable opportunities for the long protected class under Title IX and causing physical harm,” Jenner said Monday at a news conference in Mineola, New York, with Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman, who signed the executive order on Feb. 22.
Jenner, 74, who won the men’s decathlon at the 1976 Olympics, came out as a transgender woman in 2015 and has been a vocal critic of trans women competing in women’s sports since 2021. Since 2020, half of states have passed laws or regulations that ban trans student athletes from competing on women’s school sports teams, according to the Movement Advancement Project, an LGBTQ think tank.
In a post on X Saturday, Jenner said she felt compelled to speak about the issue as a trans woman to show that “it’s biology, it is not about exclusion or not being tolerant.”
In an interview with NBC News, David Kilmnick, president of the New York LGBT Network, an LGBTQ nonprofit on Long Island and in Queens, called Jenner’s support of the order a “baffling contradiction to her own identity.” He said he fears that a high-profile athlete throwing their support behind Blakeman’s ban may contribute to bullying of trans youths.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul and the state’s attorney general, Letitia James, both Democrats, have spoken out against the ban, and accused Blakeman, a Republican, of bullying transgender youths.
Read the full story at NBC News.
