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University of Pennsylvania removes times acceptable by trans swimmer arsenic portion of solution to civilian rights investigation.
Published On 2 Jul 2025
A apical assemblage successful the United States has agreed to barroom transgender athletes from women’s sports and erase records acceptable by a salient trans swimmer pursuing unit from the medication of President Donald Trump.
The University of Pennsylvania (UPenn) and the US Department of Education connected Tuesday announced the statement to resoluteness a national civilian rights probe focused connected transgender swimmer Lia Thomas.
Thomas, who was calved antheral and came retired arsenic a trans pistillate successful 2018, won a National Collegiate Athletic Association Division I rubric successful 2022, becoming the archetypal trans jock to execute the feat.
Thomas, who began hormone replacement therapy successful 2019 as portion of the modulation from antheral to female, besides acceptable UPenn records successful 5 women’s events, including the 100-metre and 500-metre freestyle competitions.
Thomas’s accomplishments became a focal constituent successful the statement astir fairness successful sport, with LGBTQ campaigners hailing the swimmer’s information arsenic a triumph for inclusion and critics, including immoderate of Thomas’s teammates, casting it arsenic an onslaught connected women’s rights.
Larry Jameson, UPenn’s president, said successful a connection that the assemblage recognised that immoderate pupil athletes had been disadvantaged by the NCAA eligibility rules that had been successful spot astatine the clip of Thomas’s participation.
The NCAA changed its eligibility rules to bounds information successful women’s events to female-born athletes successful March, pursuing Trump’s enforcement bid denying backing to acquisition institutions that let trans girls and women to compete.
“We admit this and volition apologize to those who experienced a competitory disadvantage oregon experienced anxiousness due to the fact that of the policies successful effect astatine the time,” Jameson said.
“We volition reappraisal and update the Penn women’s swimming records acceptable during that play to bespeak who would present clasp the records nether existent eligibility guidelines.”
UPenn aboriginal connected Tuesday removed Thomas from its website’s database of “All-Time School Records”, and added a enactment stating that Thomas acceptable records during the 2021-22 play nether “eligibility rules successful effect astatine the time”.
UPenn’s determination comes aft the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights successful April announced that it had determined the assemblage to person violated Title IX by “permitting males to vie successful women’s intercollegiate athletics and to inhabit women-only intimate facilities”.
US Education Secretary Linda McMahon called Tuesday’s statement a “great triumph for women and girls”.
“The Department commends UPenn for rectifying its past harms against women and girls, and we volition proceed to combat relentlessly to reconstruct Title IX’s due exertion and enforce it to the fullest grade of the law,” McMahon said successful a statement.
Human Rights Campaign and GLAAD, 2 of the biggest LGBTQ advocacy organisations successful the US, did not instantly respond to requests for comment.
UPenn’s announcement is the latest successful a bid of moves to bounds trans people’s information successful athletics successful the US and elsewhere since Trump returned to the White House successful January.
In March, World Athletics said it would require participants successful women’s events to acquisition DNA investigating to beryllium their biologic sex.
Opinion polls person pointed to increasing nationalist absorption to trans women and girls competing against female-born athletes.
In a New York Times/Ipsos canvass published successful January, 79 percent of Americans said that trans women should beryllium barred from pistillate sports, up from 62 percent successful 2021.
English (US) ·