Amid Heated Rivalry Craze, USA Hockey Quietly Bans Trans Athletes

[Jessica_Rose ✅]

Amid Heated Rivalry Craze, USA Hockey Quietly Bans Trans Athletes

https://www.them.us/story/amid-heated-rivalry-craze-usa-hockey-quietly-bans-trans-athletes 🔗

Samantha Riedel (28 Jan 2026)

USA Hockey, the governing body for ice hockey in the United States, has quietly banned transgender athletes from hockey leagues that match their gender identity, according to a newly discovered policy document.

The organization adopted, but did not publicly announce, a new Participant Eligibility Policy last November that enacted major new restrictions on trans athletes' participation in the sport. USA Hockey's previous policy, approved in 2019, allowed trans women and girls to participate in competitive women's leagues after completing one year of testosterone suppression, and required trans men to compete in men's leagues if they had begun testosterone, while allowing nonbinary players to register for any league for which they met the requirements.

The new policy eliminates all such allowances, permitting athletes only to register for hockey programs "based on their sex assigned at birth." Trans men who "have undergone any male hormone therapy" are also barred from participating in women's leagues, however, and will seemingly be limited only to co-ed programs, based on the new policy's language. (The document asserts that the "vast majority" of USA Hockey programs are co-ed and not restricted by sex, including youth leagues, school athletic programs, and leagues for disabled players.)

[Iztaccihuatl]

The driver behind all of this is the USOPC, which feels bound by some of Trump's executive orders and currently forces all governing bodies for any Olympic sport to adopt the 'sex assigned at birth' language.

I wonder what would happen if a national governing body for one sport decides to declare all events as all gender events, but segregates by testosterone level, either proven or assumed via assigned sex at birth. My guess is it would work, but the language would be strange as there would be high-T and low-T events...