Several female athletes who stood next to President Trump three weeks ago to celebrate an executive order banning transgender participation in women’s sports were not invited to a White House event Thursday for a briefing on women’s sports after they criticized the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s new policy, sources told CBS News.
Among those who didn’t get asked back for the briefing on Title IX issues were Riley Gaines, a former NCAA swimmer; Sia Liilii, captain of the University of Nevada’s women’s volleyball team; and Kaitynn Wheeler, a former NCAA swimmer at the University of Kentucky.
Some of the athletes have publicly clashed with the White House’s preferred messaging by openly criticizing the NCAA in social media posts and other public statements.
“It’s absolutely not a win at all and we need to demand for better,” Wheeler told CBS News.
White House officials told CBS that Thursday’s Title IX event is for state attorneys general and is an effort to encourage them to use sex discrimination authorities already in place in their states to protect women and girls in athletics.
Sports figures whose stories haven’t yet been highlighted by the Trump administration were invited, they said. Some athletes from Maine, whose Democratic governor has said she will fight Mr. Trump’s order in court, will be there, one of the officials said.
After Mr. Trump earlier this month signed the executive order titled “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports,” the NCAA — the nonprofit that governs college sports — issued a new policy stating a “student-athlete assigned male at birth may not compete for an NCAA women’s team.”
White House officials said they think the NCAA policy is a victory for Mr. Trump because the organization is not accepting amended birth certificates and is being more aggressive than other sporting organizations such as the Ladies Professional Golf Association, National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics, and the International Rugby League.
However, some of the women athletes and advocates at the photo opportunity with Mr. Trump have since argued the NCAA policy has major loopholes and continues to allow male athletes to compete in women’s sports.
Payton McNabb, a 17-year-old who was injured during a collision with a transgender female athlete during a volleyball game, was initially invited to Thursday’s event, but it was unclear if she would attend, people familiar with the matter said. Liilii was invited and later asked not to come, they said.
Jennifer Sey, a former gymnast and business executive who has been an advocate for keeping transgender women out of women’s sports, said the sports governance landscape is complicated – multiple bodies govern various corners of sports. Olympics and independent events such as the Boston Marathon can claim they’re outside the executive order because they don’t receive federal funding, she said.
“It’s very fractured — there was no way an EO was going to be able to solve the entire problem. It was a great first step,” Sey said. “But in the meantime, I think the NCAA policy is wildly insufficient.”
Sey, who was invited to the White House for the executive order event but not Thursday’s briefing, said she and others hope Mr. Trump will pressure the NCAA to redo it. “It should be thrown in the garbage,” she said.
May Mailman, Mr. Trump’s senior policy strategist who has been coordinating the policy and the events, told CBS the White House is closely watching the NCAA and if men are allowed in women’s sports, that won’t be acceptable.
“We are using every tool that we have. We care about this issue,” Mailman said. “We are trying to get the state AGs to go along with us and I think they want to.”
