In a landmark decision, the U.S. Department of Education (ED) has reached an agreement with the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn) requiring the removal of trans-identifying male swimmer Lia Thomas’s records from the women’s category. The university must also restore records to the female athletes displaced by Thomas, issue a formal apology to those affected by Thomas’s participation in women’s competitions and locker rooms, and enforce biological sex-based eligibility for future male and female athletes.
This resolution stems from a Title IX investigation launched by the ED’s Office for Civil Rights on February 6, 2025. The investigation followed President Donald Trump’s executive order the previous day. President Trump also withheld $175 million in federal funding from the University of Pennsylvania because they allowed biologically male athletes to compete in female sports.
According to federal investigators, UPenn violated Title IX, a law prohibiting sex-based discrimination in federally funded education programs, by allowing a biologically male athlete to compete on the women’s swim team and access female-only facilities.
The university has already moved to amend its records. However, a note remains on its website stating that Thomas competed under the NCAA’s transgender participation policy in effect during the 2021–2022 season and set program records in three freestyle events.
[RELATED: UK Supreme Court Answers, ‘What Is a Woman?’—Colleges Should Pay Attention]
While this resolution establishes a significant precedent, its implications for other institutions remain unclear. Several colleges have fielded trans-identifying male athletes in recent years, including:
- Cece Telfer, who won the NCAA Division II women’s 400-meter hurdles title in 2019 while competing for Franklin Pierce University.
- Blaire Fleming, who played for San Jose State University’s women’s volleyball team during the 2024–2025 Mountain West Conference Championship season.
- Sadie Schreiner, who has set multiple meet records in the 200-meter dash for the Rochester Institute of Technology during the 2024–2025 indoor track season.
The broader debate over transgender participation in women’s sports has intensified over the past decade. In 2011, the NCAA adopted a policy permitting male athletes to compete in the women’s category after one year of testosterone suppression. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) followed in 2015 with a similar guideline, requiring testosterone levels to remain below 10 nmol/L.
Though Cece Telfer’s NCAA title attracted limited public attention, the issue gained widespread prominence when New Zealand weightlifter Laurel Hubbard qualified for the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, followed by Lia Thomas’s NCAA championship victories in 2022.
Amid mounting backlash, both the NCAA and the IOC opted to defer eligibility decisions to individual sport governing bodies. That shift paved the way for an amalgamation of participation rules, some of which adhere strictly to biologically sex based eligibility for the female category (e.g., World Athletics) while others allow for athletes to self-identify as women (e.g., USA Curling). On April 8, 2024, the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) announced it would limit participation in women’s sports to individuals born female. In 2025, the NCAA adopted a similar policy, aligning itself with the Trump administration’s federal directive.
As policy shifts continue, the UPenn resolution marks a new twist in federal enforcement action under the revised Title IX guidance. It may well signal a turning point in the legal and political landscape surrounding sex-based athletic eligibility.
Follow Gregory Brown on X.
Image: “Lia Thomas in Boston, Massachusetts” by Iszac Henig on Wikimedia Commons
This is based on the fallacy that all men are equally big, fast, & strong — much as Title IX created sports for women, we need to have ability level grouping of sports for men.
And we need to return the male sports that were cancelled.