March Madness final features 2 states that allow trans athletes

This week, 68 colleges and universities in both NCAA Division I men’s and women’s basketball begin the March through March.

It’s also the second tournament since the NCAA banned trans student-athletes from competition last year, and comes at a time when 32 states have put forth similar bans at the scholastic level or are looking at putting such bans on the ballot in November.

As we look through both the men’s and women’s brackets, we find a sizeable amount of public colleges and universities who made the draw come from those states. Enough leading contenders in both tournaments are in place, though, to make a Final Four of schools from open, affirming states possible.

Looking at the men’s bracket, 38 public universities come from states that have banned trans student-athletes from competing in school sports. This number includes Duke (located in North Carolina), the overall No. 1 seed in the tournament, and defending national champion Florida, along with six of the top eight overall seeds in the draw (Duke, Arizona, Purdue, Florida, Houston and Iowa State).

Get off the sidelines and into the game

Our weekly playbook is packed with everything from locker room chatter to pressing LGBTQ sports issues.
Subscribe to our Newsletter today

Related

Wisconsin basketball gets men’s March Madness 5-seed with gay first-year GM
Marc Vandewettering elevated to General Manager of the Wisconsin Badgers men’s basketball team. Now they have a strong March Madness seed.

In contrast, Michigan holds the top seed in the Midwest Regional, and its state government swatted down several attempts at a trans sports ban, while officials said they’d ignore last year’s presidential executive order. The other is East Regional second-seed Connecticut. The Huskies are seeking their third national title in four years and the state has been the target of three lawsuits by the anti-LGBTQ hate group Alliance Defending Freedom since 2019.

The women’s field of 68 has 32 public universities that are in states with no trans bans. Among that number are Washington, Colorado and Colorado State. Their respective states have not passed a trans ban, but have ballot actions for November on the issue pending. In the case of Washington, the ballot action is being fueled financially by a conservative hedge fund billionaire and spiritually by disdain for a young trans woman, now in college, who won two state championships as a high school track athlete.

Twenty-nine other public universities are in the draw and their states have anti-trans laws or state regulations on the books. Among contenders holding such distinction are 2023 national champion Louisiana State and 2024 national champion South Carolina, although Gamecocks head coach Dawn Staley has publicly spoken out against such restrictions. Five of the eight top seeds on the women’s side are in states that ban trans athletes (Vanderbilt, South Carolina, TCU, LSU and Texas), while three do not (UConn, UCLA and Michigan).

Connecticut and UCLA stand as the top overall seeds in the entire draw, coming from state’s with trans protections. The defending national champion Huskies enter the field undefeated and are led by two first-team Associated Press All-Americans in Azzi Fudd and Sarah Strong.

The Bruins, led by All-American center Lauren Betts, see this year as their best shot at their first NCAA women’s title. In 1978, UCLA stood atop the nation when women’s collegiate sport was run by the Association of Intercollegiate Athletics for Women.

Among the overall picture, the states with the highest number of teams in both tournaments are from the ban states. Texas has eight squads, followed by Iowa and Ohio with five each. Ohio passed a trans student-athlete ban/affirming health care ban combination law in 2024, while Iowa stripped all legal protections from transgender Iowans in 2025.

Subscribe to the Outsports newsletter to keep up with your favorite out athletes, inspiring LGBTQ sports stories, and more.

The post March Madness final features 2 states that allow trans athletes appeared first on Outsports.