U.S. Sports Governance

USA Rugby, the sport’s national governing body, has announced it will restructure competition into three categories — Men’s, Women’s and a new Open Division — in order to accommodate transgender athletes while complying with President Donald Trump’s 'Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports' executive order and a U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee (USOPC) mandate. Under the policy, the Open Division will be available to athletes of any sex or gender identity for both contact and non‑contact events, while the Women’s Division is restricted to those who register as 'Female' in USA Rugby’s Rugby Xplorer system, a choice that creates a rebuttable presumption that the athlete’s sex at birth was female. USA Rugby reserves the sole right to challenge that presumption using 'authoritative' records, effectively centralizing enforcement of the women’s‑category boundary. The move follows a July USOPC update requiring national governing bodies to align with Trump’s order, and comes amid broader international moves toward genetic sex testing in elite sport, with USOPC medical chief Jonathan Finnoff saying the committee is exploring how to make such tests available to U.S. athletes if required by global federations. The policy is already being discussed online as a template other U.S. federations might adopt as they try to reconcile White House directives, Olympic eligibility rules, and legal risks around transgender participation in women’s sports.