Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced Wednesday that his department had issued new “guidance on sex-based definitions” aimed, in part, at keeping transgender women and girls out of female sports and fulfilling President Trump’s pledge that the federal government will recognize only two sexes: male and female.
“This administration is bringing back common sense and restoring biological truth to the federal government,” Mr. Kennedy said in a statement. “The prior administration’s policy of trying to engineer gender ideology into every aspect of public life is over.”
As part of the initiative, the Health and Human Services Department has launched a new web page for the federal Office on Women’s Health. The page, entitled “Protecting Women and Children,” features a video with Riley Gaines, the former University of Kentucky all-American swimmer who says she was put at a competitive disadvantage when competing against a transgender woman.
The guidance offers detailed definitions for the words “male” — “a person of the sex characterized by a reproductive system with the biological function of producing sperm” — and “female” — “a person of the sex characterized by a reproductive system with the biological function of producing eggs (ova).”
The announcement came in response to an executive order Mr. Trump issued on Jan. 20 that gave the health department 30 days to issue “clear guidance” to the public on how to interpret sex-based definitions. “These sexes are not changeable and are grounded in fundamental and incontrovertible reality,” the order declared.
On Tuesday, Mr. Kennedy delivered a welcome address to department employees in which he said his agency would work toward helping Americans “to discover our own paths to living our fullest lives, unleashing the potential in every one of us to make good personal choices that allow us to nourish, to heal and to develop ourselves.”
There are roughly 1.6 million youths and adults in the United States who identify as transgender, according to an estimate by the Williams Institute at the U.C.L.A. School of Law. Mr. Trump’s predecessor, President Joseph R. Biden Jr., made protecting transgender people a cornerstone of federal policy.
Mr. Biden’s assistant secretary for health, Dr. Rachel Levine, a pediatrician, made history by becoming the first transgender person to be confirmed by the Senate to a federal position.
Mr. Trump has rapidly reversed Biden administration policies. He has followed up his Jan. 20 executive order with a string of others aimed at stripping away the rights of transgender people in almost every corner of American life — including schools, hospitals, prisons, the military and housing.
Critics have objected not only to the substance of the orders, but to their harsh language. The order barring taxpayer dollars from financing medical interventions for transgender children is headlined “Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation.”
Government agencies, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which is under the health department, were ordered to delete any language mentioning “gender ideology” from their websites. A judge has since ordered the C.D.C.’s page restored. Some are still down.
Other sites — including the C.D.C.’s Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System — now carry a disclaimer.
“This page does not reflect biological reality and therefore the Administration and this Department rejects it,” the disclaimer says, adding that the information presented is “extremely inaccurate.”
