The Trump administration announced Monday that the University of Pennsylvania violated federal civil rights laws by allowing a transgender swimmer to compete on the women’s team and use female-only facilities — a move that could cost the Ivy League school millions in federal funding.
Officials did not name Lia Thomas directly, but the case focuses on the former Penn swimmer who, in 2022, became the first openly transgender athlete to win an NCAA Division I title. The Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights found that Penn broke Title IX — the law that bans sex-based discrimination in education — by “denying women equal opportunities” when it allowed a biological male to compete in women’s athletics, wrote ESPN.
The University of Pennsylvania is Trump’s alma mater and the announcement comes after years of the Biden administration trying to force biological males to be allowed to compete in women’s and girls sports.
Now, Penn faces a deadline: It must voluntarily comply within 10 days or risk legal action. Federal officials are demanding that the university admit it violated Title IX, rescind Thomas’s collegiate awards and records, and personally apologize to each female athlete who was affected.
Penn declined to comment Monday. In the past, the university has said it followed all NCAA and Ivy League rules during Thomas’s eligibility. At the time, NCAA policy allowed transgender women to compete after completing at least one year of hormone therapy — a requirement Thomas met.
The findings come after President Trump issued an executive order in March freezing about $175 million in federal funding to Penn, including major grants from the Department of Defense and the Department of Health and Human Services. The move is part of Trump’s wider push to bar transgender athletes from competing in women’s sports. In February, he ordered that athletes must compete based on their sex assigned at birth.
Following that order, the NCAA scrapped its previous sport-by-sport eligibility rules and imposed a full ban on transgender women competing in women’s sports.
Penn is not the only institution under scrutiny. The Education Department has also launched investigations into San Jose State University volleyball, Denver Public Schools, Portland Public Schools, the Oregon School Activities Association, and the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association.
In addition, the department has filed a lawsuit against the state of Maine to force compliance with federal standards or threaten the loss of federal funding.
The Penn case marks a major flashpoint in the national debate over how to balance transgender inclusion with protecting opportunities for female athletes — a battle playing out in courtrooms, classrooms, and campaigns across the country. In 2023, Riley Gaines, a former college swimmer and activist fighting to keep biological men out of women’s swimming, was held hostage by leftwing activists when she attempted to give a speech San Francisco State University.
Thomas, who had been ranked 65th in the 500-yard freestyle and 554th in the 200-yard freestyle on Penn’s men’s team, rose to 1st and 5th, respectively, after joining the women’s team.
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Penn has been taken over by a left leaning radicals for a very long time like MOST other colleges. The commie indoctrination is very well documented. Shut down federal funding altogether until the records are corrected.
THE WEAKEST MEN COMPETE WITH GIRLS, THE WEAKEST MINDS CELEBRATE IT
Probe all Colleges since all Leftist based