The College of Pennsylvania’s determination to ban transgender female athletes from competing in girls’s sports activities to resolve a civil rights grievance by the Division of Training is being slammed by LGBTQ activists and authorized consultants as unconstitutional.
The Trump administration announced this week that the Ivy League college has agreed to comply with the Division of Training’s interpretation of Title IX, the landmark civil rights legislation that prohibits sex-based discrimination in education schemes and actions that obtain federal monetary help.
The administration had beforehand suspended $175 million in federal contracts awarded to Penn, citing the participation of overtly transgender athlete Lia Thomas on the ladies’s swimming workforce throughout the 2021-2022 season.
The College of Pennsylvania introduced, July 1, 2025, that it’s banning transgender feminine athletes from competing in sports activities to adjust to President Donald Trump’s government orders.
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“It is embarrassing, harmful and ill-advised. I believe they made a really huge mistake that they may come to remorse,” Shannon Minter, authorized director for the Nationwide Middle for LGBTQ Rights, informed ABC Information. “It is weird conduct, and it simply appears humiliating that such a strong, revered college is simply caving in to those merciless and gratuitously hurtful positions.”
Minter added, “I believe extortion is an excellent metaphor for what is going on on right here. It’s the federal authorities threatening to withhold funding if the college would not conform to take a place.”
‘Legally it is mindless’
As a part of the settlement, Penn will adhere to 2 of President Donald Trump’s executive orders that the White Home says defend girls from “gender ideology extremism.”
The college can also be required to strip Thomas of her swimming awards, together with her win within the 500 freestyle on the 2022 NCAA Division I Swimming & Diving Championships, and ship a letter of apology to feminine swimmers who competed in opposition to Thomas.
The varsity additionally agreed to maintain student-athlete loos and locker room entry strictly separate on the idea of intercourse.
Former College of Pennsylvania swimmer Lia Thomas, who’s overtly transgender, smiles on the rostrum after successful the 200 freestyle throughout the 2022 Ivy League Ladies’s Swimming and Diving Championships, Feb. 18, 2022, in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
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“Legally, it is mindless,” Minter stated. “I imply, the place of the Trump administration is that Penn someway did one thing improper by following the legislation that was acknowledged to be the legislation by federal courts and by the Division of Training and the Division of Justice on the related time, and so they had been complying with NCAA coverage. So, to punish them after the actual fact as a result of the administration now has taken a distinct place on what they assume the legislation needs to be, is fairly outlandish.”
When requested for remark, the college directed ABC Information to a letter to the varsity group by College of Pennsylvania President Dr. J. Larry Jameson.
Within the letter, Jameson stated the college’s “dedication to making sure a respectful and welcoming setting for all of our college students is unwavering.”
The letter added: “On the similar time, we should adjust to federal necessities, together with government orders, and NCAA eligibility guidelines, so our groups and student-athletes could interact in aggressive intercollegiate sports activities.”
White Home: ‘Commonsense’ victory
U.S. Training Secretary Linda McMahon applauded Penn’s determination as a “commonsense” victory for girls and women.
“Due to the management of President Trump, UPenn has agreed each to apologize for its previous Title IX violations and to make sure that girls’s sports activities are protected on the College for future generations of feminine athletes,” McMahon stated in a statement .
Administrator of the Small Enterprise Administration Linda McMahon speaks as President Donald Trump listens throughout the inaugural assembly of the Presidents Nationwide Council for the American Employee within the Roosevelt Room of the White Home, on Sept. 17, 2018, in Washington, D.C.
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Throughout his presidential marketing campaign, Trump pledged to get “transgender madness the hell out of our colleges” and “maintain males out of girls’s sports activities.”
“This Administration doesn’t simply pay lip service to girls’s equality: it vigorously insists on that equality being upheld,” Riley Gaines, a former College of Kentucky swimmer who tied with Thomas for fifth place within the 200 freestyle on the 2022 NCAA championships, stated in an announcement in regards to the UPenn determination.
Gaines stated she hoped Penn’s determination would immediate different instructional establishments to chorus from violating girls’s civil rights, and “renews hope in each feminine athlete that their nation’s highest management is not going to relent till they’ve the dignity, security, and equity they deserve.”
Political activist and former aggressive swimmer Riley Gaines (C) watches as President Donald Trump delivers remarks earlier than signing the ‘No Males in Ladies’s Sports activities’ government order on the White Home, Feb. 5, 2025.
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In a 2022 interview with ABC’s “Good Morning America,” Thomas, who initially competed on Penn’s males’s swim workforce, denied she had an unfair benefit over swimmers who had been born feminine.
“There’s quite a lot of elements that go right into a race and the way effectively you do and the largest change for me is that I am joyful, and sophomore yr, the place I had my finest occasions competing with the boys, I used to be depressing,” Thomas informed GMA. “So, having that be lifted is extremely relieving and permits me to place my all into coaching, into racing. Trans folks do not transition for athletics. We transition to be joyful and genuine and our true selves.”
Minter stated it was “surprising” that Penn would agree retroactively to punishment for one thing lawful on the time.
“For my part, it is nonetheless lawful. The one factor that has modified is the administration has taken a distinct view,” Minter stated. “That is simply traditional intimidation, bullying and harassment. It is actually unhappy to see a college like Penn simply knuckle below, I am certain in hopes that they won’t be additional focused in the event that they accomplish that. It is a shameful day for the college, for our nation.”
Minter stated he believes Penn’s settlement is opening the college as much as “every kind of legal responsibility” transferring ahead.
“They’ve now acknowledged publicly that they had been violating the legislation, and so what’s to cease every kind of different third events from coming again and suing them now and saying, ‘Nicely, you’ve got admitted that what you had been doing is illegal.’ I imply, it wasn’t, however they’ve now stated it was and they also’re creating legal responsibility for themselves,” Minter stated.
Supreme Courtroom to listen to trans athlete case
Naiymah Sanchez, senior organizer for the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania, informed ABC Information that she fears different universities which can be topic to the Division of Training’s civil rights investigation will comply with in Penn’s footsteps.
“The anti-trans motion is permitting the constructing of energy amongst people who find themselves ignorant as a result of they do not know and individuals who really feel like if solely we will take away these of us, we may have a greater life,” stated Sanchez. “There’s nothing that the College of Pennsylvania did that was illegal. It adopted commonplace pointers.”
State bans on transgender college students collaborating in women’ and girls’s sports activities have change into flashpoints throughout the nation.
On Thursday, the U.S. Supreme Courtroom announced it would hear appeals from two states looking for to uphold such legal guidelines.
The circumstances from West Virginia and Idaho — which might be scheduled for argument subsequent time period within the fall — will resolve whether or not the Structure and the Civil Rights Act prohibit the bans primarily based on an athlete’s intercourse assigned at start.
Decrease courts in these circumstances sided with the scholar athletes to find the state legal guidelines violated both the 14th Modification’s equal safety clause or Title IX of the Civil Rights Act.
The choice to listen to the circumstances follows a choice by the court docket’s conservative majority final month upholding state bans on gender-affirming medical care for transgender minors. Chief Justice John Roberts stated the legal guidelines didn’t violate the 14th Modification or discriminate on the idea of intercourse, regardless that the identical medical therapies are extensively out there to cisgender minors.
Sanchez famous that in 2024, then-NCAA President Charlie Baker, the previous Republican governor of Massachusetts, testified at a Senate Judiciary Committee listening to that out of greater than 500,000 scholar athletes competing on the school stage, fewer than 10 had been transgender.
“As a trans particular person, we strive to not get too emotionally connected to the problems which can be occurring, even when we’re not those who’re being denied the precise,” Sanchez stated. “However the actuality is {that a} new administration got here in and so they set their targets to a sure factor. They are going after the best fruit on the tree. Nevertheless it’s not nearly selecting the best fruit on the tree, it is about uprooting the whole tree.”
