The Department of Education announced Tuesday that the University of Pennsylvania has entered into a resolution agreement for allowing males to compete in female athletics and will revoke all awards given to males who competed on female teams. As a result of this agreement, the university will rescind all awards given to swimmer Lia Thomas.
The University of Pennsylvania will also abide by the Department of Education’s (DOE) demands to follow Title IX guidance in the future, ensuring that males will no longer participate in female sports. As part of the agreement, the university will restore all records and titles to female athletes that were misappropriated to male athletes, issue a public commitment to Title IX, adopt biology-based definitions of “male” and “female,” rescind guidance allowing men in women’s sports, and apologize to impacted female competitors.
Education Secretary Linda McMahon praised President Donald Trump for his success in protecting women’s sports with this accomplishment.
“Today’s resolution agreement with UPenn is yet another example of the Trump effect in action,” McMahon said. “Thanks to the leadership of President Trump, UPenn has agreed both to apologize for its past Title IX violations and to ensure that women’s sports are protected at the university for future generations of female athletes.”
Thomas competed on the men’s swim team at UPenn until 2019, when he began identifying as female and joined the women’s team. As a male swimmer, Thomas had been ranked in the mid-500s nationally. But after switching to the women’s division, he quickly rose to national prominence, shattering records and dominating the competition.
Thomas’s obvious physical advantages over female swimmers made him a national flashpoint over men competing in women’s sports. Things reached a boiling point at the 2022 NCAA Women’s Swimming Championships, where Thomas tied for fifth place in the 200-yard freestyle final with University of Kentucky swimmer Riley Gaines. However, the NCAA awarded the fifth-place trophy to Thomas, sparking outrage from Gaines and others who viewed it as a political decision rather than an athletic one.
Gaines has since become one of the leading voices defending women’s sports and opposing what she and many others see as the erasure of women’s categories by male competitors. In hindsight, the Lia Thomas saga was a turning point in the larger cultural battle over truth, fairness, and the protection of women’s rights in the face of radical gender ideology.
“This administration does not just pay lip service to women’s equality: it vigorously insists on that equality being upheld,” Gaines said following the news. “It is my hope that today demonstrates to educational institutions that they will no longer be allowed to trample upon women’s civil rights, and renews hope in every female athlete that their country’s highest leadership will not relent until they have the dignity, safety, and fairness they deserve.”
Paula Scanlan, who also had to compete against and share a locker room with Thomas, likewise thanked the Trump administration for enforcing Title IX.
“As a former UPenn swimmer who had to compete against and share a locker room with a male athlete, I am deeply grateful to the Trump Administration for refusing to back down on protecting women and girls and restoring our rightful accolades,” she said. “I am also pleased that my alma mater has finally agreed to take not only the lawful path, but the honorable one.”
The Trump Department of Education launched an investigation into the university in February over the issue and concluded that the school did, in fact, violate Title IX. The department offered the resolution agreement to the university to voluntarily resolve the issue before potentially referring the case to the Department of Justice.
University of Pennsylvania President J. Larry Jameson published a statement regarding his school’s agreement with the DOE. He stated that the university “must comply with federal requirements, including executive orders, and NCAA eligibility rules, so our teams and student-athletes may engage in competitive intercollegiate sports.”
The university’s official statement also explains that intimate facilities will be “strictly separated on the basis of sex and comparably provided to each sex,” and that the university will comply with Title IX moving forward.