CNN
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The latest battleground in America’s culture war over gender identity will be played out on a volleyball court in Las Vegas on Saturday.

San Jose State University will play for an NCAA Tournament berth in a season that has seen teams lose games against the Spartans because of a federal lawsuit alleging one of its players is transgender.

The head coach of women’s volleyball never considered removing the player at the center of the controversy from the game. CNN is not identifying her by name because she declined to comment through a university official. Neither she nor her school have publicly commented on her gender identity.

“The university and I have decided that everyone who has completed a volleyball education at San Jose State will participate in this program by the end of the year,” coach Todd Kress told ESPN.

The rules for trans athlete participation are not the same for every NCAA sport. And even years after a similar controversy surrounding University of Pennsylvania swimmer Lia Thomas, there remains no conclusive scientific consensus on the physical benefits of trans athletes.

As NCAA executives and its members continue to debate the issue, the organization with over 500,000 college athletes in all 50 states says this about transgender athletes:

The NCAA issued its first policy on trans athletes in 2010. This year, Kye Allums, a transgender man, became the first known transgender player on an NCAA team in a major sport. Allums continued to play on the George Washington University women’s team during his transition.

The NCAA originally required every transgender athlete to receive hormone therapy for “gender dysphoria” for at least a year before being allowed to compete in women’s track and field.

It would be another 12 years before the NCAA substantially overhauled its rules regarding transgender athletes. More specifically, the 2022 policy calls for a testing program for players to determine whether their hormone levels are within certain standards.

The association also said it would adopt a “sport-by-sport approach,” allowing each sport’s national governing body to set its own specific standards. This left different benchmarks across sports that are subject to change without input from NCAA member institutions.

Then-NCAA President Mark Emmert defended the decision at the time. “This policy alignment provides consistency and further strengthens the relationship between collegiate sports and the U.S. Olympics,” Emmert said in a statement.

And it remains the organization’s current approach. “The Board of Governors has discussed the participation of transgender student-athletes,” the NCAA said after a meeting in April of this year. “The current policy is still under review.”

“Sport-specific policies are subject to ongoing review and recommendation by the NCAA Committee on Competition Protection and Medical Aspects of Sports to the Board of Governors,” the association’s website states.

An NCAA spokesperson told CNN on Friday: “There are no updates available at this time.”

Not everyone supports the status quo. The Independent Council on Women’s Sports is sponsoring a class-action lawsuit against the NCAA over its policies toward transgender athletes. The nonprofit advocacy group’s co-founder, Marshi Smith, has called on the NCAA to “release a policy that protects the women’s category.”

Smith’s organization hailed it as a small but notable victory when the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) announced this year that it would effectively ban transgender women from participating in women’s sports at the 237 colleges under its jurisdiction, representing about 83,000 athletes. would prohibit.

“Only NAIA student-athletes whose biological sex is female may participate in NAIA-sponsored women’s sports,” that association ruled, providing exceptions only for practices and exhibitions.

Pressure on the NCAA over its transgender policies reached a crucial tipping point on February 17, 2022.

Lia Thomas, a transgender woman who competes on the University of Pennsylvania swimming team, won the Ivy League championship in the 500-yard freestyle, beating her closest competitor by 7.5 seconds at the competition in Boston. A day later, Thomas also won the 200-yard freestyle, setting a new conference record.

Thomas had competed on men’s teams in high school and the first half of her college career. In keeping with NCAA guidelines, she took testosterone blockers and estrogen for a year before competing on Penn’s women’s team and underwent lab tests to ensure her hormone levels were within rules.

But Thomas’ overwhelming dominance in Boston established a new battle line in the broader culture war.

Anti-trans activists called Thomas a villain and argued that her success eclipses the achievements of cisgender women. Those who advocate for the acceptance of trans athletes in competitive sports argue that there is no evidence that transgender women have an advantage. And they say it’s illegal under Title IX to deny them participation, but they’ve had a harder time arguing that cases like Thomas’s are rare and of little relevance to the vast majority of cisgender competitors.

Thomas planned to continue swimming competitively after college, she told Sports Illustrated. But World Aquatics rules bar transgender athletes from competition unless they have not yet experienced biological puberty. The Court of Arbitration for Sport rejected Thomas’ challenge to the rule, barring her from most elite competitions, including the 2024 Olympics.

The dilemma facing the NCAA and other sports organizers is complicated by the fact that there is no clear scientific consensus on whether transgender women, particularly those who have experienced male puberty, enjoy a natural physical advantage even after prolonged hormone therapy towards cis women.

And like cisgender athletes, trans athletes’ abilities vary.

A 2017 review in the journal Sports Medicine found that there is “no direct or consistent research” showing transgender people have an advantage. But it is nearly impossible, experts say, to determine, for example, whether a trans woman’s pre-transition testosterone load would provide a greater advantage than the height of a person born tall, who studies show could therefore run faster, or whether there is a variant of ACTN3 or ACE -Genes could give an athlete an advantage in speed and strength.

A widely cited 2020 review in the British Journal of Sports Medicine that examined the records of 75 Air Force individuals found that trans women were, on average, 9% faster than their cisgender female counterparts, even after a year of testosterone suppression.

Another 2023 academic study found that athletic differences between trans women and cisgender women are shrinking as they transition, arguing: “The exclusion of trans people also harms the skills and athleticism of both cisgender and cisgender women. as well as trans athletes.”

“Unfortunately, there is a lack of research on cisgender and trans gender differences,” added that study’s author, DJ Oberlin, in the journal Frontiers in Sports and Active Living.

Whether the NCAA will consider these or other studies when reviewing its policies for trans athletes is unclear. The association did not provide any information in April about what aspects of its policies would be reviewed, who would review them, whether that process would be public or when it might be completed.