Transgender hockey player slams 'quiet' trans ban as 'horrible' new rules revealed

Warning: This article contains discussion of discrimination against the trans community which some readers may find distressing.

A transgender ice hockey player has slammed USA Hockey, the governing body for ice hockey in the United States, for quietly 'banning transgender athletes'.

Hunter Browne, 32, shared a video to Instagram last week explaining the new rules, which were passed in November 2025, but not immediately announced to the public. They're set to go into effect on 1 April, 2026.

The sports star became the first the first openly trans professional ice hockey player back in 2016, paving the way for other LGBTQ+ hockey players, such as former pro hockey player Jesse Kortuem who came out recently.

Browne just starred in HBO's gay hockey romance Heated Rivalry, as Connors, Ilya’s teammate.

Speaking to his followers, he slammed the policy as he explained: "USA hockey has quietly barred trans people from participating in hockey safely. Myself included."

The actor explained that the policy USA Hockey have updated was previously known as the USA Hockey Transgender Athlete Eligibility Policy and was introduced back in 2019, allowing transgender girls and women to play on teams that reflected their gender identity.

Browne said: "There were different qualifications depending on the level that was played. The biggest one was for the more competitive, older leagues, where trans women had to go undergo hormone therapy for an entire year and also had to have letters from their doctors and parents."

"So there were already safeguards put in to ensure that there was "fair" participation when including transgender athletes.

"So now, this new policy is called the USA Hockey Participant Eligibility Policy. So they're effectively erasing transgender from even the name."

He explained: "Athletes are only permitted to participate in such programmes based on their sex assigned at birth, except that a female assigned at birth may not play in programs restricted to females if they have undergone any male hormone therapy."

Essentially, this means that now, athletes are only allowed to register for hockey programs based on 'sex assigned at birth'.

Trans athletes can no longer compete, even if trans women suppress testosterone or trans men take testosterone.

"So actually, trans men are effectively barred from even recreational leagues. Like, If I wanted to play with my friends in a recreational league as an adult, that I played with my entire career, I am ineligible," Browne said.

The sports star continued: "So the thing about these new sport bans that are coming out, barring trans women from participating, usually are based on nothing. There's not an influx of trans athletes and some of these sports have never seen a trans athlete participate."

He referenced former pro ice hockey Jessica Platt as an example for the sport, who is transgender but 'wasn't top of the league or automatically better than cisgender women'.

Browne later added: "It’s no surprise that men’s hockey is not a safe environment for gender non-conforming individuals and the women’s side is often the only place for most queer people to play.

"Barring trans individuals from these spaces essentially bars us from hockey. Horrible."

According to a report by Them, the USA Hockey document outlines that their new rules were updated at the direction of the US Olympic & Paralympic Committee (USOPC), which it says 'requires that each sport’s national governing body [...] must update and adopt their own policies to follow federal guidance'.

Tyla has contacted USA Hockey for comment.

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