UPenn To Update Swimming Records Set By Lia Thomas, Settling With Feds On Transgender Athletes Case | EUROtoday

WASHINGTON (AP) — The University of Pennsylvania says it should replace data set by transgender swimmer Lia Thomas and apologize to feminine athletes “disadvantaged” by Thomas’ participation on the ladies’s swimming staff, a part of a decision of a federal civil rights case.

The U.S. Education Department and Penn introduced the voluntary settlement Tuesday. The case targeted on Thomas, the transgender swimmer who final competed for the Ivy League college in Philadelphia in 2022, when she grew to become the primary brazenly transgender athlete to win a Division I title.

The division investigated Penn as a part of the Trump administration’s broader try and take away transgender athletes from women’ and girls’s sports activities, discovering the faculty violated the rights of feminine athletes.

Under the settlement, Penn agreed to revive all particular person Division I swimming data and titles to feminine athletes who misplaced out to Thomas and ship a personalised apology letter to every of these swimmers, the Education Department mentioned.

On Tuesday afternoon, the Penn web site confirmed different athletes holding the varsity’s high instances in Thomas’ freestyle occasions. The website was annotated with a word that learn, “Competing under eligibility rules in effect at the time, Lia Thomas set program records in the 100, 200 and 500 freestyle during the 2021-22 season.”

“While Penn’s policies during the 2021-2022 swim season were in accordance with NCAA eligibility rules at the time, we acknowledge that some student-athletes were disadvantaged by these rules,” Penn President J. Larry Jameson mentioned in a press release. “We recognize this and will apologize to those who experienced a competitive disadvantage or experienced anxiety because of the policies in effect at the time.”

As a part of the settlement, the college should additionally announce that it “will not allow males to compete in female athletic programs” and it should undertake “biology-based” definitions of female and male, the division mentioned.

In his assertion, Jameson mentioned Penn has all the time been in compliance with NCAA and Title IX guidelines as they have been interpreted on the time, and that the college has by no means had its personal insurance policies round transgender athlete participation. The college has adopted modifications to eligibility tips as they have been issued earlier this 12 months, he mentioned. The NCAA modified its participation coverage for transgender athletes in February, limiting competitors in ladies’s sports activities to athletes who have been assigned feminine at delivery.

“Our commitment to ensuring a respectful and welcoming environment for all of our students is unwavering,” Jameson mentioned. “At the same time, we must comply with federal requirements, including executive orders, and NCAA eligibility rules, so our teams and student-athletes may engage in competitive intercollegiate sports.”

Education Secretary Linda McMahon referred to as it a victory for girls and women.

“The Department commends UPenn for rectifying its past harms against women and girls, and we will continue to fight relentlessly to restore Title IX’s proper application and enforce it to the fullest extent of the law,” McMahon mentioned in a press release.

The Education Department opened its investigation in February and concluded in April that Penn had violated Title IX, a 1972 legislation forbidding intercourse discrimination in schooling. Such findings have virtually all the time been resolved by way of voluntary agreements. If Penn had fought the discovering, the division might have moved to refer the case to the Justice Department or pursued a separate course of to chop the varsity’s federal funding.

In February, the Education Department requested the NCAA and the National Federation of State High School Associations, or NFSHSA, to revive titles, awards and data it says have been “misappropriated by biological males competing in female categories.”

The most blatant goal on the school degree was in ladies’s swimming, the place Thomas gained the nationwide title within the 500-yard freestyle in 2022.

The NCAA has up to date its report books when recruiting and different violations have stripped titles from sure colleges, however the group, just like the NFSHSA, has not responded to the federal authorities’s request. Determining which occasions had a transgender athlete taking part years later can be difficult.

Associated Press writers Annie Ma and Dan Gelston contributed. Gelston contributed from Philadelphia.

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