Pete Buttigieg acknowledges ‘fairness issues’ with trans athletes in women’s sports

Prominent Democrat and former U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg weighed in on the debate about transgender athletes competing in women’s sports. 

During an interview with NPR, Buttigieg acknowledged “fairness issues” in the debate. 

“Around sports, … I think most reasonable people would recognize that there are serious fairness issues if you just treat this as not mattering when a trans athlete wants to compete in women’s sports,” Buttigieg said. 

The Democrat then agreed that parents who have complained about trans athletes competing against their daughters “have a case.” However, Buttigieg also argued that politicians shouldn’t be dictating policy to determine whether males can compete in women’s and girls sports. 

“And that’s why I think these decisions should be in the hands of sports leagues and school boards and not politicians … in Washington trying to use this as a political pawn,” Buttigieg said.

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“Chess is different from weightlifting, and weightlifting is different from volleyball and middle school is different from the Olympics. So, that’s exactly why I think that we shouldn’t be grandstanding on this as politicians. We should be empowering communities and organizations and schools to make the right decisions.”

Democrats, including former President Joe Biden, have advocated for policy changes that would allow trans athletes to compete in women’s and girls sports. Biden passed an executive order on his first day in office in January 2021 that said “Children should be able to learn without worrying about whether they will be denied access to the restroom, the locker room, or school sports.” 

Democrats in Congress also tried to pass the Transgender Bill of Rights and the Equality Act, both of which would have allowed trans athletes to compete in girls and women’s sports. 

President Donald Trump signed the “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports” executive order Feb. 5, and 27 states have passed their own laws to ensure similar restrictions. 

Buttigieg joins several other prominent Democrats and media pundits who have spoken out against allowing males to compete with females, including California Gov. Gavin Newsom; Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Mass.; and HBO host Bill Maher. 

An April report by The New York Times claims that Biden did not agree with trans athletes participating in women’s and girls sports.

“According to a number of former Biden-administration officials, there remained a simmering debate inside the administration about whether those Title IX protections should extend to sports,” the Times reported,. “One side …maintained that there was no legal difference between letting trans students use bathrooms that align with their gender identity and letting trans student athletes play on sports teams that align with their gender identity.”

However, Biden was “on the other side … who believed that the competitive, zero-sum nature of sports made them different from bathrooms — that some transgender athletes would enjoy unfair physical advantages over women. Most important, one of the officials holding this view was Biden himself.” 

A New York Times/Ipsos survey found the vast majority of Americans, including a majority of Democrats, don’t think transgender athletes should be permitted to compete in women’s sports.

“Thinking about transgender female athletes — meaning athletes who were male at birth but who currently identify as female — do you think they should or should not be allowed to compete in women’s sports?” the survey asked. 

Of the 2,128 people who participated, 79% said biological males who identify as women should not be allowed to participate in women’s sports. 

Of the 1,025 people who identified as Democrats or leaning Democrat, 67% said transgender athletes should not be allowed to compete with women. 

Other data suggests the issue affected the outcome of the 2024 election. 

A national exit poll conducted by the Concerned Women for America (CWA) legislative action committee found that 70% of moderate voters saw the issue of “Donald Trump’s opposition to transgender boys and men playing girls’ and women’s sports and of transgender boys and men using girls’ and women’s bathrooms” as important to them. 

And 6% said it was the most important issue of all, while 44% said it was “very important.” 

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