A prominent university in the United States has decided to prohibit transgender athletes from competing in women’s sports and to nullify records established by a well-known trans swimmer, following pressure from President Donald Trump’s administration.
The University of Pennsylvania and the US Department of Education announced on Tuesday that they had reached an agreement to conclude a federal civil rights investigation concerning transgender swimmer Lia Thomas.
Thomas, who was assigned male at birth and came out as a trans woman in 2018, won a National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I championship in 2022, becoming the first trans athlete to achieve this milestone.
Having started hormone replacement therapy in 2019 as part of her transition, Thomas set UPenn records in five women’s events, including the 100-metre and 500-metre freestyle races.
Her achievements sparked significant debate over fairness in sports, with LGBTQ advocates celebrating her participation as a triumph for inclusion, while critics, including some of Thomas’s teammates, viewed it as a threat to women’s rights.
Larry Jameson, the president of UPenn, stated that the university acknowledged that some student athletes had faced disadvantages due to the NCAA eligibility rules that were in place during Thomas’s participation.
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In March, the NCAA revised its eligibility criteria to restrict participation in women’s events to those assigned female at birth, following Trump’s executive order that threatened funding for educational institutions allowing trans girls and women to compete.
Jameson expressed: “We recognize this and will apologize to those who experienced a competitive disadvantage or felt anxiety due to the policies in effect at the time.”
He added that “we will review and update the Penn women’s swimming records set during that season to reflect who would now hold the records under current eligibility guidelines.”
Later on Tuesday, UPenn removed Thomas from its website’s list of “All-Time School Records” and included a note indicating that she set those records during the 2021-22 season under the eligibility rules that were in effect at that time.
This action by UPenn follows the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights announcing in April that the university had violated Title IX by “allowing males to compete in women’s intercollegiate athletics and to use women-only intimate facilities.”
