A transgender sports pioneer reflects on Trump’s first 100 days

“Yesterday I played 18 holes. I’m going to play 18 holes in my league today, and if I feel okay, I’ll play 18 holes tomorrow,” said Richards recently.

The former professional tennis player and ophthalmologist made headlines in the 1970s, when after transitioning to female she sued and won the right to play in the U.S. Open. During her half-decade pro career, the doctor peaked at 20th in the world and in 1977 made the U.S. open finals in doubles, where she lost to a pair that included tennis legend Martina Navratilova.

Half a century later, her views have evolved — she believes transgender women who transition after puberty should not compete in women’s sports — but she’s aghast at broader restrictions on transgender rights during the Trump administration’s first 100 days.

The State Department has halted the practice of issuing passports with “X” gender markers. The Office of Personnel Management directed agency heads to strip “gender ideology” from websites, contracts and emails. An executive order calls on the federal government “to rescind all funds from educational programs” that allow transgender girls and women to compete. Another order restricts access to gender-affirming care for youth. The Department of Defense has reinstated President Trump’s first term transgender military ban, and transgender federal inmates are now regarded by their sex at birth. The changes are the subject of ongoing lawsuits.

First and foremost on Richards’ mind: the Navy veteran believes transgender Americans should be able to serve openly in the military.

“That’s terrible. You know, I can only think of myself because I was in the Navy when nobody knew that I was a transgender. I hadn’t had surgery yet, but it was still me,” said Richards, who won the All-Navy tennis championship while serving. “That goes a long way back, but I’m still representative of the same ilk even though they didn’t know it at the time.”

Richards is the subject of a forthcoming book, tentatively titled “Finding Renée,” by former Sports Illustrated editor Julie Kriegman. Richards believes the fierce debate over transgender athletes has fueled a “jump…from the sports to the military, to the education, to the bathrooms, to the passports, to the existence, to the teaching of any kind of gender.”

It’s a trend that has played out in state legislatures, before and during the current Trump administration, according to Logan Casey, the director of policy research at the nonprofit Movement Advancement Project, which tracks state laws and executive orders regulating gender.

Casey said state-level bans on sports prior to the current Trump administration “laid the groundwork for all of the anti-transgender and anti-LGBTQ attacks more broadly.”

“It sort of put sports as a foot in the door, and a framework, for how many people who had not previously thought about transgender people very much — let alone in the context of policy and law — are now thinking about it and framing it,” said Casey, who noted the vast majority of state legislation targeting LGBTQ rights fails to become law.

Ash Lazarus Orr, a spokesperson for Advocates for Trans Equality, said the language of Mr. Trump’s executive orders bore similarities to orders and legislation coming out of state capitals. 

“It signals back to states that, yes, this is a priority. You should continue to do this, and in fact do this and other attacks,” said Orr, who is also the title plaintiff in a lawsuit over the Trump administration’s policy requiring U.S. passports to reflect sex assigned at birth. “While we were seeing attacks on the trans community escalating at a state level under the Biden administration, what we are seeing now under the Trump administration is absolutely an escalation.”

Former Olympic swimmer Nancy Hogshead, a Democrat who founded the nonprofit advocacy group Champion Women, believes the party is suffering from self-inflicted wounds.

Hogshead, who supports efforts to align participation in sports with gender at birth, said Trump and Republicans have found a galvanizing issue. 

“It is a winner for them. It is a winner for Republicans,” Hogshead said. “Fifty percent of all girls play sports. That is a meat and potatoes issue for them. It’s not a fringe issue.”

Richards believes Trump has a similar view. She said, as an ophthalmologist, she treated one of his sisters and has met Mr. Trump once.

“He knows I’m not an ogre,” she said. “He sees, and his advisors advise him, that his popularity rests with the small group of people that hate the idea of transgender, period.”

Richards, whose professional tennis career began in 1977 when she was more than 40 years old, largely agrees with Hogshead. In April 2024, she provided the Women’s Tennis Association with a position paper on participation of transgender women in sports, and this year allowed Sports Illustrated to publish it. In the paper, Richards concluded that people who have undergone male puberty should be ineligible to compete against biological females.

Richards’s paper included reflections on her time playing both as an amateur and professionally, analysis of “the current literature on the subject,” citing her decades as a doctor, and policy recommendations. 

It also touched on golf.

“My lifetime in sports is still ongoing,” she wrote. “I have been a member of the ladies’ golf league at the public/private club near my home for the past 20 years.”

Richards spoke to CBS News on opening day last week. She said, despite politics, the women in her league still welcome her competition.

“Not only welcome and accepted, but if I didn’t show up, they would have a cemetery ceremony, believe me,” Richards said. 

Are there a lot of 90-year-olds there, still hitting the links?

“Yeah, me. Amongst the men and the women, I’m the only one,” Richards said, adding that she guesses the average age at the club is 60. “I play the forward tee, but I don’t play any gold tees that are in front of that — and I hit the ball as well as they do, too.”