The Trump administration said Monday that the University of Pennsylvania violated Title IX by letting a transgender swimmer compete on the school’s women’s team and enter into women’s facilities. It gave Penn 10 days to voluntarily resolve the violations, proposing that Penn do so by stripping Lia Thomas — a transgender woman who formerly swam on the Penn women’s team from the 2020-21 and 2021-22 seasons — of her national championship.
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The statement does not name Thomas specifically, but says Penn should “restore to all female athletes all individual athletic records, titles, honors, awards or similar recognition for Division I swimming competitions misappropriated by male athletes competing in female categories.”
The Trump administration also proposed that Penn send an apology letter to the female athletes “whose individual recognition is restored” by stripping Thomas of her title.
If Penn does not voluntarily resolve the violations, it risks a referral to the U.S. Department of Justice for enforcement proceedings, the statement said.
Penn declined a request for comment.
Thomas became the first known transgender athlete to win a Division I national championship in any sport in March 2022, when she won the 500-yard freestyle with a time of 4 minutes, 33.24 seconds.
Thomas finished 1.75 seconds ahead of Olympic bronze medalist Emma Weyant, who was at Virginia at the time. Weyant transferred to Florida for the 2023-24 season. She also swam in the 2024 Paris Olympics, earning a bronze medal in the 400-meter individual medley with a time of 4:34:93.
Thomas was not allowed to participate in Olympic competition after losing a challenge against the Court of Arbitration of Sport in Switzerland — the world’s top court in matters of sporting fairness — to overturn the rules of World Aquatics that prevent transgender women from competing in women’s divisions. The judge ruled Thomas did not have standing to bring the case.
World Aquatics, which sets rules that inform elite competitions like the Olympics, introduced a new gender policy in June 2022, allowing transgender women to compete in women’s events only if they transitioned before the age of 12 or before one of the early stages of puberty. The ruling excludes transgender women who underwent male puberty, like Thomas, from participating in women’s races.
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Thomas began transitioning using hormone replacement therapy in May 2019. She swam on the Penn men’s team from the 2017-18 to 2019-20 seasons. By 2021, Thomas met the NCAA hormone therapy requirements to swim on Penn’s women’s team.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Feb. 5 to prevent transgender athletes from competing in girls’ and women’s sports unless they were assigned female at birth. The executive order also promised to deny federal funding to any high schools and colleges that do not comply.
On Feb. 6, the NCAA changed its transgender participation policy to reflect the executive order, limiting competition in women’s sports to student-athletes assigned female at birth. The NCAA made its policy change announcement shortly after the U.S. Department of Education said it would launch investigations into San Jose State University and Penn — as well as the governing body for Massachusetts high school sports — over what it said were “apparent Title IX violations” related to transgender women playing women’s sports.
The Feb. 5 executive order follows one Trump signed on Jan. 20 — the first day of his second term in the White House — ordering the federal government to define sex as only male or female and to change federal policies and government-issued IDs to reflect that.
When Thomas competed in 2022, the NCAA used a sport-by-sport approach when deciding on whether or not to allow transgender athletes to participate. The NCAA complied with the specific sport’s national or international governing body.
At that time, swimmers like Thomas who completed one year of hormone replacement therapy were eligible to switch categories and compete, but the Feb. 6 NCAA policy change ended the sport-by-sport basis guiding the association to allow or disallow transgender athletes to compete.
(Top photo of Lia Thomas competing in 2022: Kathryn Riley / Getty Images)
This news was originally published on this post .
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