A group of female athletes have launched a lawsuit against the NCAA over the organization allowing “transgender” athletes to compete against them and use locker rooms designated for women.
Filed by the Independent Council on Women’s Sports (ICONS) on behalf of over a dozen athletes, the suit accuses the NCAA of violating Title IX. It aims to prohibit biological males from competing against women and demands the NCAA revoke awards given to “transgender” athletes who competed against female athletes.
The Free Press explains the new lawsuit and how it revolves around one of the most controversial transgender athletes to participate in college athletics.
At the center of the class-action lawsuit is Lia Thomas, the trans athlete who dominated the 2022 NCAA Swimming Championships while a student at the University of Pennsylvania. The suit states that both the NCAA and Georgia Tech, which hosted the event, knowingly violated Title IX, the federal statute that guarantees equal opportunity for men and women in college education and sports.
The lawsuit, the first federal action of its kind, seeks to change the rules, rendering any biological males ineligible to compete against female athletes. It demands the NCAA revoke all awards given to trans athletes in women’s competitions and “reassign” them to their female contenders. It also asks for “damages for pain and suffering, mental and emotional distress, suffering and anxiety, expense costs and other damages due to defendants’ wrongful conduct.”
In 2022, Thomas clinched the 500-yard freestyle title at the NCAA Division I Women’s Swimming and Diving Championships and was named All-American in all three events Thomas participated in. Thomas first competed for the University of Pennsylvania’s men’s swim team as a male from 2017 to 2020 but never reached the NCAA championships during that time. After two years on hormone therapy, Thomas switched to the women’s team, trouncing female competitors in both sprint and endurance races.
Thomas’s switch to the team also meant a switch in the locker room. The lawsuit accuses the NCAA of “destroying female safe spaces in women’s locker rooms,” in a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. It claims the association allows “naked men possessing full male genitalia to disrobe in front of non-consenting college women” and creates “situations in which unwilling female college athletes unwittingly or reluctantly exposed their unclad bodies to males, subjecting women to a loss of their constitutional right to bodily privacy.”
Thomas has dominated the women in competition.
Allowing transgender athletes to compete against women has been a contentious issue, especially in Olympic and other international sports.
The Daily Caller reports that “the lead attorney of the lawsuit is Bill Bock, who formerly served as the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) General Counsel and resigned from the NCAA Committee on Infractions in February 2024 over rules allowing men to compete in women’s sports, according to the press release.
The international governing organizations for cricket, track and field and swimming barred biological males from competing in women’s events in 2023.”
Sue for 1-8B