The politics of exclusion: Analyzing U.S. state responses to interscholastic transgender athletes

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper provides a baseline characterisation of legislative action against transgender people participating in U.S. interscholastic sport. Using Kingdon’s multiple streams approach, we analyse legislation across the 50 states using data up to 1 October 2022. We also analyse qualitative data from public officials to document the framing and justification of legislative efforts. Our findings are clustered into four categories – legislators in states that have enacted legislation to prevent transgender participation in school sport (n = 19), those that have introduced legislation (n = 23), those that have not (yet) taken action (n = 7), and those that have progressive legislation requiring schools to permit participation by gender identity (n = 1). Our data suggest that national-level interest groups have played a critical role in policy diffusion across the states, leveraging the problem window in an intensely contested context, using sporting, judicial, and political focusing events to draw attention to the perceived problem. These dynamics have resulted in solutions searching for problems. Moreover, the issue of transgender inclusion in sport (a subset of legislative efforts against transgender people) has escalated a form of symbolic politics which is as much about partisan contestation as it is about addressing a perceived problem. While we recognise that the issue is complex, we believe that there are other solutions – beyond outright exclusion from school sport – that should be more fully explored. Because exclusionary policies claim to uphold sport’s fundamental values, sport organisations can lead on this issue by clearly defining these values and translating them into pragmatic policy solutions.