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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowA Carmel High School standout is among three former University of Pennsylvania women swimmers suing Penn, Harvard University, the Ivy League and the Indianapolis-based NCAA for alleged Title IX violations by allowing transgender swimmer Lia Thomas to compete on Penn’s women’s swim team in 2021-2022.
Grace Estabrook, a former Carmel swim team captain and two-time Indiana high school champion in the 200 medley relay, is joined by former Penn teammates Ellen Holmquist and Margot Kaczorowski as plaintiffs in the lawsuit filed Tuesday in federal court in Massachusetts.
They are represented by Indianapolis-based Kroger Gardis & Regas attorneys Bill Bock and Justin Olson and the Massachusetts Liberty Legal Center.
The lawsuit was filed just a day before President Donald Trump signed an executive order Wednesday banning transgender athletes from participating in girls’ and women’s sports.
The NCAA on Thursday announced that it was changing its transgender competition policy for women’s sports to comply with Trump’s order.
Trump’s order gives federal agencies the ability to ensure that institutions receiving federal funding abide by Title IX, aligning with the Trump administration’s view that interprets “sex” as the gender someone is assigned at birth.
The former Penn swimmers’ lawsuit accuses the defendants of engineering a “public shock and awe display of monolithic support for biological unreality and radical gender ideology” in allowing Thomas to compete.
“The Ivy League’s belief was that crowning a man an Ivy League champion in women’s swimming would normalize cross-sex competition in previously sex-separated sports categories and render inevitable nationwide acceptance of a new set of gender norms for college sports,” the lawsuit states.
The former Penn swimmers claim the Ivy League Council of Presidents engaged in a season-long pressure campaign to keep Thomas eligible to compete, and that when a NCAA rule change threatened to derail their plans, forged a campaign to prevent that from happening, eventually winning out.
At the 2022 Ivy League Championships, Thomas set pool records in every individual event the swimmer competed in and topped the victor’s podium four times.
The NCAA told Indiana Lawyer that it does not comment on pending litigation but said that the association and its members “will continue to promote Title IX, make unprecedented investments in women’s sports and ensure fair competition in all NCAA championships.”
Prior to announcing its change in policy, the organization also issued a broad statement to all media on its website in response to Trump’s executive order.
“We strongly believe that clear, consistent, and uniform eligibility standards would best serve today’s student-athletes instead of a patchwork of conflicting state laws and court decisions,” the NCAA said in its written remarks. “To that end, President Trump’s order provides a clear, national standard.”
Lawyers for the former Penn swimmers did not immediately respond to Indiana Lawyer’s request for comment on the lawsuit.
Their complaint accuses the NCAA and the other defendants of two violations of Title IX, alleging that they deprived plaintiffs and the class of similarly situated individuals the equal opportunity to compete in the Ivy League Championships. They also claim one of the plaintiffs lost out on competing in the championships because of defendants’ actions in allowing Thomas to compete.
In addition to asking the defendants to declare they violated Title IX and asking the court to vacate Thomas’ NCAA and college records, the plaintiffs are seeking injunctive relief and damages for the pain and suffering and mental and emotional distress they suffered.
Thomas participated on the men’s team for three years at Penn before swimming on the women’s team as a senior after beginning hormone replacement therapy.
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3 very sick individuals.
Yes, 3 individuals sick of men duct taping their genitals and putting a wig on and saying “I’m ready to compete against the ladies!”…
Sounds like Glen F. likes kink. Where the h— did he come up that?
Women’s sports is NOT the place for mediocre failed male athletes.
Michael R…. sounds like you like the kink of guys dressed up as females and calling them your girlfriend. I guess if that’s your thing…..
Glen, please learn up. That’s not what’s happening here. At all.
We’ve seen for the last few years what’s “happening” here…and it’s all over.
I highly doubt you have seen it. In almost all such cases, and there are very few, the gender of the athlete in question has been determined by qualified medical experts. Not you, or the President. So once again, you tilt at windmills and argue against actual facts. Not a pretty picture. Effective, though, I must admit.
The right to be free of these few instances of trans atheletes competing as women, versus the rights of women athletes to participate in athletic programs with funding equal to, or approaching equal to, those of the men. You know, that “E” thing in DEI…equity. The right of women athletes to be free of the predations of the Larry Nassers of the world, and to have the parents and other responsible adults, like school and sport administrators, take the complaints seriously and not sweep them under a rug. The Trusk MAGAts just want the inflammatory issue, not the real work or treating women athletes fairly.
Thank you Timothy S. and Rick S. This is a solution in search of problem… like flag burning, the Turkish boxer at the Olympics, people need to read books, educate themselves and also acknowledge that the trusk exec order is non-binding. That means there is no law created and no force of law. This will only be exploited on Fox “news”.