Gov. Braun Signs Executive Orders Aimed to Protect Women's Sports

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INDIANAPOLIS - Governor Mike Braun today signed two executive orders aimed at ensuring fairness in women’s sports and rejecting extreme gender ideology in favor of scientific reality of biological sex.

Executive Order 25-35 (Protecting Opportunities in Post-Secondary Women's Sports) mandates mandates that Indiana’s state educational institutions must comply with the 2020 Title IX Rule rather than the 2024 Biden Administration reinterpretation that extended protections based on self-reported, “gender identity.” 

The order ensures that female athletes in college sports are not forced to compete against biological males.

Governor Braun says the order preserves the integrity of women’s athletics and protects opportunities for women in female-only sports leagues. 

"Women’s sports create opportunities for young women to earn scholarships and develop leadership skills. Hoosiers overwhelmingly don’t want those opportunities destroyed by allowing biological males to compete in women’s sports, and today’s executive order will make sure of that,” Governor Braun added.

Braun says he signed Executive Order 25-36 (Ensuring Indiana Law is Based on Reality of Biological Sex Rather than Extreme New Gender Theories), "because extreme gender ideology created the problem in women's sports in the first place."

“Replacing the scientific fact of biological sex with the always-changing, self-reported idea of ‘gender identity’ has real consequences: it puts women in danger in female-only spaces like prisons, it destroys opportunities for women in sports, and it tells troubled kids that their mental health problems can be solved with sterilizing drugs and irreversible sex change operations. Indiana will not go along with this radical new idea of what gender means, and we will not allow tax dollars to be used to promote this ideology — instead, we’re going to focus on providing Freedom and Opportunity for all Hoosiers," said Braun.