The Pacific Northwest Rugby Referees Society (PNRRS) is the Local Referee Organization for Idaho, Oregon, and Washington states, USA. We urge World Rugby to reconsider the position set forth in their draft proposal to prevent transgender women from playing women’s rugby. Members of our community will be excluded if they are not allowed to play women’s rugby. We believe that rugby’s stated goal of being a sport for all means that the strictest scrutiny must be applied to any policies that would limit inclusion. The science included in the working materials that led to the draft proposal is limited, unconvincing, and does not meet the standard of evidence that should be required before excluding a class of people. We routinely allow women of vastly different strengths to compete against each other. If safety were truly the goal, and safety is truly best influenced by having people of similar sizes compete against each other, should we not separate players of all genders by age and amount of force they can generate, rather than by biological sex?
The issue was not only presented to World Rugby as being about safety, but also about maintaining the fairness of the elite game. How many transgender women are trying to play rugby at an elite level? How many transgender women are currently involved in women’s rugby at the club level? Is it fair to those women at the community level to be excluded? As a society, we’ve requested feedback from our rugby community. The loudest feedback we’ve received is from ciswomen members of our rugby community, voicing support for their transgender teammates. Even at our local elite level, the feedback we’ve received from women’s clubs is that they are uniformly opposed to the policy; they are not concerned with the prospect of competing against transwomen.
Further, this policy discriminates against a group that historically has suffered extreme discrimination. Many of these people have found team, family, and community in the clubs in our region. Taking away these things should only be done with the most compelling evidence. Doing so without compelling evidence is cruel and capricious.
Finally, there are legal issues involved; what if states or countries have laws preventing discrimination against transgender people? What happens when teams from those locales travel to new locales? How are clubs to verify that someone is not trans? Does there need to be some sort of procedure in place to verify someone’s biological sex before they can play rugby? The implications of the existing policy are well known regarding these issues, but changing the policy to exclude people will mean a whole new host of issues, many of which are difficult to foresee.
In conclusion, there are practical, scientific, and value related reasons for World Rugby to reconsider its draft policy. The policy as suggested has caused alarm to our members. Our members referee because of their love of the game and its values; our society is concerned that this policy will drive away not just players, but referees. We urge World Rugby to withdraw its draft policy and restart the policy development process to be more inclusive.