Carmel athlete among Ivy League women swimmers suing NCAA over transgender competitor

A 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.