The Daily Populous Wednesday July 2nd, 2025 morning edition
Authored by cnn.com and submitted by Capable_Salt_SD

People in sports LGBTQ issues Donald Trump See all topics Follow

The University of Pennsylvania will block transgender athletes from female sports teams and erase the records set by swimmer Lia Thomas as part of an agreement with the federal government, the Department of Education said.

The agreement comes as part of the Trump administration’s broader restrictions on transgender people, as it steps up its efforts to ban transgender athletes from competing in women’s sports nationwide and serving in the military.

Thomas, a UPenn graduate, won the 2022 NCAA championship in the women’s 500-yard freestyle. Thomas is a transgender woman.

“Penn has always followed — and continues to follow — Title IX and the applicable policy of the NCAA regarding transgender athletes,” UPenn President J. Larry Jameson said in a news release Tuesday.

In February, the NCAA announced an overhaul of its transgender athlete policy to limit transgender participation in women’s sports in response to Trump’s executive order.

The White House in March cut off $175 million in federal funds for Penn related to the transgender athlete issue. It’s not clear whether that money will be restored.

“Penn will continue to adhere to these new rules,” Jameson added.

Thomas’ records have been removed from a UPenn list of all-time school records in women’s swimming. A note at the bottom of the document reads, “Competing under eligibility rules in effect at the time, Lia Thomas set program records in the 100, 200 and 500 freestyle during the 2021-22 season.”

CNN has reached out to the NCAA for comment regarding the agreement.

The US Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights said in a statement Tuesday that an investigation found UPenn violated Title IX by “permitting males to compete in women’s intercollegiate athletics and to occupy women-only intimate facilities.”

Title IX prohibits sex-based discrimination at any academic institution that receives federal funding.

“We will review and update the Penn women’s swimming records set during that season to indicate who would now hold the records under current eligibility guidelines,” Jameson said.

UPenn also agreed to issue a statement specifying that it “will adopt biology-based definitions for the words ‘male’ and ‘female’ pursuant to Title IX” and consistent with two executive orders on transgender athletes from President Donald Trump, according to the Department of Education.

The school says it will also apologize to female student athletes who lost to Thomas during the 2021-2022 swim season.

“We recognize this and will apologize to those who experienced a competitive disadvantage or experienced anxiety because of the policies in effect at the time,” Jameson said.

Trump’s ban on female trans athletes

In February, Trump signed an executive order titled “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports” with the goal of banning transgender women from competing in women’s sports.

“With this executive order, the war on women’s sports is over,” the president said during a signing ceremony surrounded by dozens of women and some young girls in athletic uniforms.

Some critics claim transgender athletes have an unfair advantage in sports, but that’s not what the research shows.

While research is limited and ongoing, a 2017 review in the peer-reviewed journal Sports Medicine found “no direct or consistent research” showing trans people have an athletic advantage.

A more recent October 2023 review of the research concluded that sex differences do develop following puberty, but many are “reduced, if not erased, over time by gender affirming hormone therapy.”

Physical attributes that could work in a trans girl’s favor, like height or limb length, for example, appear to be “less malleable,” the study said, but it also pointed out that there are no efforts to restrict cisgender athletes who are taller than average or exceptionally gifted physically in any other way.

The executive order is two-pronged, leaning on compliance with Title IX, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in education programs or activities that receive funding from the federal government, as well as federal engagement with the private sector.

Ahead of the signing, a White House official said that the new action would take the opposite position on Title IX from the Biden administration, which established a rule that schools are violating Title IX when they ban transgender students from participating on sports teams.

The Trump administration’s position on Title IX, the official previously said, is “if you’re going to have women’s sports, if you’re going to provide opportunities for women, then they have to be equally safe, equally fair, and equally private opportunities, and so that means that you’re going to preserve women’s sports for women.”

Thomas became the first transgender athlete to win an NCAA Division I title in 2022 after finishing first in the women’s 500-yard freestyle event.

A former swimmer on the men’s team at UPenn, Thomas has come to personify the ongoing debate on trans women’s participation in sports and the balance between inclusion and fair play.

Thomas previously told the SwimSwam podcast she realized she was trans the summer of 2018, but kept it to herself, wary that coming out would take away her ability to swim.

“The very simple answer is that I’m not a man,” she told Sports Illustrated in March. “I’m a woman, so I belong on the women’s team. Trans people deserve that same respect every other athlete gets.”

In February, three former athletes at UPenn’s women’s swimming program sued the school, the Ivy League Council of Presidents and athletics organizations, claiming they violated federal law to allow Thomas to compete against them.

Thomas has not commented publicly on the latest lawsuit. Despite her expressed intention to keep swimming competitively after college, Thomas has been barred from international events by the rules of World Aquatics, which only qualify transgender athletes who have not experienced biological puberty.

The Court of Arbitration for Sport denied Thomas’ challenge to the rule, making her ineligible for most elite competitions, including the 2024 Olympics.

This story has been updated with additional details.