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Penn Bans Transgender Women From Sports Teams
By Kyle Pagan
Published:
This would typically be a Kinker post because he’s the Big J of the company and more affluent to talk about this stuff than I am. But he’s off so bear with me while I try to navigate these unknown waters (no pun intended). Penn has banned transgender women from their sports teams in the wake of the fallout around Lia Thomas who hasn’t swam there since 2022 via the Associated Press:
The University of Pennsylvania on Tuesday modified a trio of school records set by transgender swimmer Lia Thomas and said it would apologize to female athletes “disadvantaged” by her participation on the women’s swimming team, part of a resolution of a federal civil rights case.
The U.S. Education Department and Penn announced the voluntary agreement of the high-profile case that focused on Thomas, who last competed for the Ivy League school in 2022, when she became the first openly transgender athlete to win an NCAA Division I title.
The department investigated Penn as part of the Trump administration’s broader attempt to remove transgender athletes from girls’ and women’s sports, concluding the university in Philadelphia had violated the rights of female athletes.
Under the agreement, Penn agreed to restore all individual Division I records and titles to female athletes who lost to Thomas and send a personalized apology letter to each of those swimmers, the Education Department said.”
The Penn website has been updated with other athletes holding the records, but included an annotation that Thomas held records in the 100, 200, and 500 freestyle in the 2021-22 season “competing under eligibility rules in effect at the time“.
The case was brought against Penn after the White House said they would freeze $175 million in federal funding for not complying with an executive order banning transgender athletes from competing in women’s sports:
Essentially, Penn agreed to ban transgender women from their sports teams so that they can keep that sweet sweet federal money flowing in. That’s where we’ll leave it! Thanks everyone!
Kyle writes blog posts and does Man on the Street-style videos all around Philadelphia. He graduated from Temple University (a basketball school) in 2015. contact: k.pagan@sportradar.com