One further note on the Obama administration’s jumble of confusion:

Today’s guidance letter first states flatly (see point 3, main paragraph) that when a school provides single-sex athletic teams, “transgender students must be allowed to participate” on those teams “consistent with their gender identity.” In other words, boys who identify as female must be allowed to compete for the girls’ teams, and girls who identify as male must be allowed to compete for the boys’ teams. (Indeed, in the context of the letter’s overarching principle that schools must treat students “consistent with the student’s gender identity,” this flat rule ought to mean that boys who identify as female must be allowed to compete only for the girls’ teams, and that girls who identify as male must be allowed to compete only for the boys’ teams.)

But the specific bullet on “Athletics” then sets forth this gobbledygook:

Title IX does not prohibit age-appropriate, tailored requirements based on sound, current, and research-based medical knowledge about the impact of the students’ participation on the competitive fairness or physical safety of the sport.

Whatever might that mean? Presumably that under some circumstances it will be permissible to bar boys who think they’re girls from being on the girls’ team.

How strange it is that privacy in a restroom, shower, or dorm room counts for nothing for the Obama transgender ideologues and that “age-appropriate, tailored requirements” are permitted only with respect to sports teams. Perhaps the Obama administration is concerned that having a guy on a girls’ team might drive some girls away from the sport—and that its transgender agenda might therefore clash with its pursuit of Title IX sports quotas. (I thank Hans Bader for his insights on this point, though I don’t mean to suggest that my framing of the matter necessarily reflects his understanding.)