Promoting Equality in College Sports: LGBTQ+ -inclusive Policies in NCAA Division I Athletic Departments

Because LGBTQ+ student athletes continue to face significant challenges in college sports, some US college and university athletic departments are implementing policies that protect LGBTQ+ students from discrimination and promote LGBTQ+ inclusion. However, we know relatively little about the characteristics of schools that maintain these policies.

The authors analyze a comprehensive dataset on LGBTQ+ -inclusive athletic department policies at 353 US colleges and universities with NCAA Division I programs as of the 2022–2023 school year. The data were collected from July 2022 to May 2023. The authors estimate results from an OLS regression of an overall scale of LGBTQ+ -inclusive athletic department policies, as well as ordinal and logistic regressions of eight separate athletic department policies.

The authors find that larger student body sizes, larger endowments per-student, and the presence of LGBTQ+ student groups are associated with higher scores on an overall scale of LGBTQ+ -inclusive athletic department policies. Additionally, affiliation with a religious denomination is associated with a lack of certain types of policy.

The findings underscore the remaining barriers to the full inclusion of LGBTQ+ student athletes in college sports and provide mixed support for social movement theories of LGBTQ+ -inclusive policy change.

Most US colleges and universities have more work to do to implement LGBTQ+ -inclusive athletic department policies. State and federal laws could potentially induce more schools to implement LGBTQ+ -inclusive athletic department policies.