WashingtonIn order to settle a federal civil rights lawsuit alleging that the university had violated the rights of female athletes, the University of Pennsylvania has agreed to bar transgender women from participating in its women’s sports teams.
The voluntary agreement was made public by the U.S. Education Department on Tuesday. Lia Thomas, the transgender swimmer who was the first openly transgender athlete to win a Division I title, was the subject of the case. Thomas last competed for the Ivy League school in Philadelphia in 2022.
It is a component of a larger effort by the Trump administration to ban transgender athletes from women’s and girls’ sports.
According to the Education Department, Penn agreed to return all individual Division I swimming records and titles to female athletes who were defeated by Thomas. Additionally, Penn consented to write each of those swimmers an individual letter of apology.
Whether Thomas would lose her Penn accolades and prizes was not immediately apparent.
Additionally, the department stated that the university must adopt biology-based definitions of male and female and declare that males would not be permitted to participate in female athletic programs.
It was hailed as a win for women and girls by Education Secretary Linda McMahon.
McMahon said in a statement, “The Department applauds UPenn for addressing its historical wrongs against women and girls, and we will keep fighting tirelessly to restore Title IX’s proper application and enforce it to the fullest extent of the law.”
Penn was found to have violated Title IX, a 1972 legislation that prohibits sex discrimination in education, by the Education Department, which began its inquiry in February and came to its conclusion in April. Voluntary agreements have nearly always been used to remedy such issues. The agency could have sought a separate procedure to reduce the school’s federal funding or moved to transfer the issue to the Justice agency if Penn had challenged the decision.
The Education Department requested in February that the National Federation of State High School Associations (NFSHSA) and the NCAA return records, titles, and prizes that it claims were stolen by biological male athletes competing in female divisions.
Thomas won the national championship in the 500-yard freestyle in 2022, making her the most obvious target at the collegiate level in women’s swimming.
Similar to the NFSHSA, the NCAA has not complied with the federal government’s demands, although it has revised its record books when recruiting and other breaches have resulted in the loss of titles for some institutions. It would be difficult to identify the events in which a transgender athlete competed years later.
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