Sixteen female college athletes reportedly are suing the National Collegiate Athletics Association for letting transgender athletes compete against them and use their locker rooms.
The Free Press reported that the center of the class action lawsuit is trans athlete and former University of Pennsylvania student Lia Thomas, who dominated the 2022 NCAA swimming championships.
The suit contends that the NCAA and Georgia Tech, which hosted the event, knowingly violated Title IX, the federal statute that guarantees equal opportunity for men and women in college education and sports.
It's the first federal action of its kind, the Free Press reported — and aims to change the rules by making any biological males ineligible to compete against female athletes, and demands the NCAA revoke awards given to trans athletes in women's competitions and "reassign" them to their female contenders.
The suit also asks for "damages for pain and suffering, mental and emotional distress, suffering and anxiety, expense costs and other damages due to defendants' wrongful conduct."
Thomas first competed for the University of Pennsylvania's men's swim team as a male from 2017 to 2020 but didn't reach the NCAA championships. According to the New Yorker, after two years on hormone therapy, Thomas switched to the women's team, and dominated female competitors in sprint and endurance races.
With the switch, Thomas also changed locker rooms; the suit accused the NCAA of "destroying female safe spaces in women's locker rooms" in a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Plaintiff Kylee Alons, who swam at North Carolina State, told the news outlet she was so uncomfortable knowing Thomas was using the women's locker room at the championships that she started changing in a "dimly lit storage and utility closet" under the bleachers.
"I was literally racing U.S. and Olympic gold medalists and I was changing in a storage closet at this elite-level meet," Alons said. "I just felt that my privacy and safety were being violated in the locker room."
Riley Gaines and Kaitlynn Wheeler, two other plaintiffs who swam at the University of Kentucky, said they first discovered the 6-foot-plus tall Thomas had access to the women's locker room when Thomas walked past them as they changed into their racing suits.
"While you're doing this, you're exposed," Wheeler said. "You can't stand there and hold a towel around you while putting the suit on at the same time."
The suit, organized by by the Independent Council on Women's Sports, also states the NCAA's decision to let Thomas compete against women is based on the "illegal premise" that "testosterone suppression and personal choice alone can make a male eligible to compete on a women's sports team."
It says the association's rules allow "men to compete on women's teams with a testosterone level that is five times higher than the highest recorded testosterone level for elite female athletes."
It also claims males who have gone through puberty retain a biological advantage over women "which no woman can achieve without doping."
Gaines, who tied with Thomas in the 200-yard freestyle final at the 2022 Championships, told the Free Press that by allowing biological males to compete against women, the NCCA "undermines everything that Title IX was created to protect."
"The NCAA's most basic job is to protect the fairness and safety of competition," Gaines said, "but instead the NCAA has been and continues to openly discriminate against women."
The lawsuit, which was filed in federal court in Georgia where the 2022 championships took place, could impact eligibility rules at all 1,100 colleges and universities represented by the NCAA — requiring all athletes born as males be barred from competing in women's sports.
"I don't know how he can be proud of himself for standing on top of the podium," Gaines, who does not use female pronouns for Thomas, told the Free Press. "He was following the rules, which is why we're challenging the rules. Because it is the rules that are the problem. Not Lia Thomas."