Policy vs. Identity in Sports

How Michigan navigates the inclusion of transgender high school athletes

By Nick Cooper | Sept. 6, 2025

Less than one month into the second Trump administration, a sweeping set of executive orders were signed that limit opportunities for transgender high school athletes. On Feb. 5, Executive Order 14201, also known as “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports,” prohibited transgender women and girls from competing in school-sponsored athletics, and schools found to allow participation could be denied federal funding.

But executive orders cannot override existing laws. At this time, Michigan state athletic administration officials will continue to allow transgender athletes to compete based in part on the Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act of 1976, which prohibits discrimination-based gender identity and expression. However, the Michigan High School Athletic Association (MHSAA) and the Michigan Interscholastic Athletic Administrators Association (MIAAA) do require documentation for trans student athletes.

“We’ve had policies and procedures since 2010 to allow students who are changing genders, going through the process, [must] provide proper documentation over multiple years to be able to participate in the gender of their choice with approval,” explains executive director of the MIAAA Karen Leinaar.

The Waiver Process

Since the inception of the MHSAA’s policies, there have been fewer than a dozen transgender student athletes utilizing the eligibility process in the state of Michigan.

The waiver process requires a great deal of personal medical information, including a record of what type of hormonal therapy is being administered as well as the frequency of the therapy. The process also requires that the student either has undergone or is actively undergoing gender-reassignment surgery to qualify for the exception.

Some sports have even more specific physical requirements. For example, wrestling weights are based on the percentage of minimum body fat (7 percent for males and 12 percent for females). An area coach—who asked to speak anonymously to protect the identity of a student who has already experienced backlash—could point to just one individual who began the path to compete as a transgender male until the policies and procedures became too much of a burden.

“There was only one [athlete] in my 12 years. You have to do your alpha weights”—the lowest weight a wrestler can compete at based on their weight at the time of a weigh-in assessment—“percentage body fat, and all that stuff’s different for female and male athletes. In the end, he ended up just doing the alpha as a biological girl because of the entire process,” says the coach.

The Waiver Experience

Leinaar has seen firsthand the hoops a transgender student had to jump through.

“We had a Zoom meeting with one of the students who had gone through the MHSAA policies and procedures and was able to participate in athletics, and that young person talked about the process that they had to go through. They were asked if they felt it was fair and equitable,” says Leinaar. “The student said yes and no. The questions were fair and to provide all of the documentation and the data they felt was fair.”

But on the other hand, “They didn’t feel it was equitable because they didn’t see that having to happen to non-gender reaffirming students. And that was a fair assessment to hear a student talk about it who had been through the process,” Leinaar says.

The MIAAA’s overarching goal for high school athletics is to allow student athletes to achieve and experience all that they can in the world of sports.

“We allow anybody to play the games that they want to play, and I think we have to continue to do that because we all believe—and I don’t care who you are—that sports are good for kids and good for society. Our job is to facilitate what’s good for kids,” Leinaar tells us.

The False Problem

While the MIAAA and MHSAA work with thousands of students across the state, the number of transgender athletes is very small. Per a February 2025 Bridge Michigan article, “Out of an estimated 175,000 high school athletes across the state, two transgender students currently have waivers.”

Adrienne Brown-Reasner, executive director of Traverse City’s Up North Pride, feels that the topic of transgender athlete participation is one that seeks to divide people.

“A large portion of our communities [are] being directly affected by the very wide variety of executive orders, bills, and legislations coming through. … I feel like [the topic of transgender athletes] is trying to draw our attention and make a problem where there isn’t a problem,” says Brown-Reasner.

She sees discrimination against trans student athletes at the federal level as one more hurdle that these students are forced to deal with in school. (And we all know being a teenager is rarely easy.)

“You just want to be able to have that high school experience that everybody else gets to have, and these [orders] are just denying them of that opportunity for reasons that no one seems to be able to really explain because it doesn’t make sense. Just let kids be,” Brown-Reasner says.

She also points to the underlying problems in the state waiver process. “This is a situation where you are asking for very private information to make it very public. Especially a kid, someone who is 16 or 17 years old. They’re going through enough.”

The Ripple Effect

The Up North Pride director believes that the messaging behind the executive order and other laws or rules like it can have far-reaching consequences in a student’s life.

“Now you’re putting up a barrier saying, ‘You can’t do that anymore, because you’re different.’ That puts a huge strain on their mental health, and not just in the sports area,” she says. “Anything that is denying someone the opportunity to be truly who they are is wrong. It’s damaging in so many ways.”

Leinaar acknowledges the sense of remoteness a student could feel when labeled “different” (or worse) by government regulations and executive orders.

“Imagine having to be in a self-contained classroom and in no way shape or form ever being allowed to be out with ‘the normal’ student body,” she says, drawing a parallel between that hypothetical experience and what trans athletes face in sports.

“High school athletics aren’t supposed to be political. There’s nothing wrong with them [transgender kids]. They just see themselves differently than what their bodies say they are,” says Leinaar.