(NewsNation) — Three swimmers and former teammates of transgender competitor Lia Thomas have sued the University of Pennsylvania and others, alleging that the school violated their rights.
Former UPenn swimmers Grace Eastabrook, Ellen Homquist and Margot Kaczorowrski filed the lawsuit in the U.S. District Court in Massachusetts this week. The Ivy League Council of Presidents, the NCAA and others are listed as defendants.
Thomas was banned from competing in elite swimming competitions, including the Olympics. Thomas swam for the University of Pennsylvania and won an NCAA title in meets that are outside the World Aquatics competitive system, in which she was not registered.
The World Aquatics governing body added a new gender inclusion policy in 2022, banning biological male athletes from competing in women’s elite races unless they transitioned by the age of 12 or before experiencing male puberty. It also created an “open” category for transgender athletes.
Thomas gained national recognition after she won the 2022 NCAA championship in the 500 freestyle and was named an All-American in three of the women’s swimming and diving championships.
In the lawsuit, the three former UPenn swimmers who all competed at the 2022 Ivy League Women’s Swimming and Diving championships, said that before the season began, the school’s swimming coach, Mike Schnur bragged that he had a “secret weapon.”
They said before the Ivy League championships, Thomas’ dominance over women’s swimmers “meet after meet” had become international news. They claim that the Ivy League Council of Presidents, which is also named as a defendant in the lawsuit, met behind closed doors to “strike a public blow for trans-identifying men competing in women’s sports.”
The lawsuit said that the 2022 Ivy League meet was to be the culmination of the league’s public campaign to “manipulate public opinion and change the NCAA Division I collegiate sports landscape” for trans-identifying men who wanted to compete in women’s competitions.
Thomas is the first known male-born athlete to win an NCAA Division I women’s title. Thomas previously competed for the university’s men’s team before transitioning to a woman.
One of Thomas’ teammates spoke to NewsNation, which agreed to allow the teammate to remain anonymous.
“This is a problem that needs to be fixed,” she told NewsNation.
The lawsuit filed by the swimmers comes on the heels of President Donald Trump signing an executive order stopping men from competing in women’s sports.
But Thomas’s former teammate told NewsNation that she feels a lot of her teammates are “really scared” to speak out. She said that the first time she saw Thomas compete with UPenn’s women’s team, she felt shocked and said the team was just forced to accept it because no one was in place to do anything about it.
This is a developing story. NewsNation will update it as more information becomes available.
