Transgender footballers will no longer be able to play with women’s teams in England

The announcement fell on Thursday 1^er may, In a short press release Posted on the website of the English Football Federation (FA): from 1^er June, transgender women will no longer be able to play in women’s teams. A decision that echoes that taken the day before, by its Scottish counterpart, banning the players concerned beyond 13 years.

This measure is an extension of a judgment of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom of April 16, according to which a woman is defined by her biological sex. “This is a complex subject and our position has always been that if there was a substantial change in law, science, or the functioning of politics in amateur football, we re -examine [notre règlement] And [le] would modify if necessary “justifies the FA.

“We understand that it will be difficult for people who just want to practice the sport they like, according to the genre that they identify”recognizes the FA. And the instance to add that she will now contact the footballers concerned “To explain the changes to them and how they can remain involved in the game.”

For its part, the Scottish Fa “Will provide advice on the implementation of the updated policy, including on the appropriate possibilities of participation for transgender people, before the policy comes into force at the start of the new season”.

To date, no vocational training in England or Scotland has said that he is counting in its ranks of transgender players, but they would be around twenty at the amateur level.

A subject at the center of debates

The federations of rugby, cricket or even British athletics already prohibit these sportsmen from competing in the female categories. These believe that this introduces a physical advantage, and therefore a form of iniquity between the participants, which has never been formally decided by science.

This subject invited itself to the center of debates with the return to power of Donald Trump in the United States. The leader of the Maga movement (Make America Great Again“Returning its greatness to America”) has made fight against transgender people one of the axes of its policy, with a lot of decrees, including that of February 5 entitled “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports”. The subject was even one of the main debates during the campaign for the succession of Thomas Bach at the head of the International Olympic Committee (CIO), at the end of March.

The judgment of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom follows a long controversy on the way in which rights based on sex are applied within the framework of a law adopted in 2010 across the Channel. The five judges had been invited to decide on what said law heard by “sex”: biological or “Certified”as defined by the 2004 law on gender recognition? Before, therefore, to decide unanimously in favor of the first option.

By making the verdict, Lord Hodge, the vice-president of the court, had insisted: “We do not recommend reading this judgment as a triumph of one or more groups in our society to the detriment of another. This is not the case. »»

Several LGBTQIA+ associations feared, before judgment, that transgender women can no longer access certain places. In their decision, the magistrates of the highest British judicial body estimated that it was legal to exclude them from certain spaces reserved for women, if considered as “Proportionate”.