MONTGOMERY, Ala. — Gov. Kay Ivey’s designation of Oct. 10 as Alabama Girls in Sports Day paired a celebration of female athletes with a message rejecting transgender identities, reinforcing her administration’s restrictions on transgender participation in school and college sports.
The Republican governor announced the proclamation Oct. 5, choosing a date her office explicitly linked to chromosomes: The two X’s in the Roman-numeral representation of Oct. 10 symbolize the two X chromosomes characteristic of the female sex, according to the announcement. The observance took place Saturday.
“Alabama sets the standard when it comes to protecting girls sports,” Ivey said in the announcement. “In Alabama, we recognize that there are fundamental biological differences between males and females. We know if the Good Lord made you a boy, you are a boy, and if He made you a girl, you are a girl. We will continue standing up for the opportunity for girls to compete fairly and safely.”
The restrictions were enacted without an identified case of a transgender athlete competing in Alabama public school sports. In May 2021, after Ivey signed the K-12 ban, the Alabama High School Athletic Association told AL.com it was not aware of any transgender athletes participating. The association already required students to compete according to the gender listed on their certified birth certificates.
Ivey’s office described the designation as an opportunity to recognize female athletes, encourage girls to participate in sports and honor Title IX’s role in expanding athletic opportunities. But the announcement also highlighted two laws she signed barring transgender students from competing on teams consistent with their gender identity.
The proclamation adds a symbolic observance to that legislative record rather than announcing a new sports eligibility restriction. The governor’s release did not identify a specific incident involving a transgender athlete in Alabama or provide a count of transgender students participating in the state’s school sports programs.
Asked how Ivey would respond to Alabamians who considered the proclamation transphobic or exclusionary toward transgender and intersex people, a spokesperson defended the governor’s position in a statement to Alabama Political Reporter.
“If standing up for our young female athletes is controversial, well, call us controversial,” the spokesperson told the publication.
The message reflects a broader political dispute over whether protecting opportunities for female athletes requires excluding transgender girls and women. While Ivey presents those restrictions as safeguards for fairness and safety, advocates for transgender inclusion argue that politicians are using women’s sports to justify discrimination.
The Women’s Sports Foundation, founded by tennis champion Billie Jean King, has rejected the premise that transgender inclusion is a threat to women’s athletic opportunities. In a March 2021 statement opposing state sports bans, the organization said such measures deny transgender girls and women the benefits of participation, including belonging, leadership development and improved health.
“We implore legislators to stop using girls’ and women’s sports as a vehicle to discriminate,” the foundation said in that statement.
The foundation identified other challenges facing female athletes, including unequal access to resources, inadequate Title IX compliance, unequal pay, limited sponsorship and media coverage, and harassment and abuse. Its statement was a response to the wave of state legislation targeting transgender athletes, not to Ivey’s newly announced observance.
Alabama’s restrictions began with legislation Ivey signed in 2021 governing public K-12 school sports. In May 2023, she signed House Bill 261, extending restrictions to public two-year and four-year colleges and universities. The college measure prohibited students from competing under a gender identity different from their sex assigned at birth, including after hormone treatment.
The 2023 legislation passed 26-4 in the Senate and 83-5 in the House. At the time, Carmarion D. Anderson-Harvey, then identified by the AP as the Human Rights Campaign’s Alabama state director, described the measure as part of a “systematic attack against LGBTQ+ people.”
“From dictating what bathrooms we can use to blatantly ignoring the actual problems in women’s sports, these politicians are making Alabama an increasingly hostile place for transgender people and the LGBTQ+ community as a whole,” Anderson-Harvey said in response to the 2023 law.
Nationally, the debate has received attention far beyond the number of openly transgender athletes identified in college competition. In December 2024, NCAA President Charlie Baker told a Senate panel that he was aware of fewer than 10 transgender athletes among more than 500,000 NCAA participants. That was a statement about athletes known to Baker at the time, not a current census or a count specific to Alabama.
In February 2025, the NCAA changed its policy to limit competition in women’s sports to athletes assigned female at birth, following President Donald Trump’s executive order targeting transgender participation in girls’ and women’s athletics. The change replaced the association’s previous sport-by-sport approach to eligibility.
Ivey’s announcement framed the October observance as a celebration of opportunity. The Women’s Sports Foundation’s position offers a different understanding of that goal: Athletic opportunities should include transgender girls and women, rather than make their exclusion a condition of celebrating other female athletes.