Former Swimmer to Newsmax: Never Expected Penn's Apology on Trans Athletes

Paula Scanlan, a former University of Pennsylvania athlete who was on a team with transgender swimmer Lia Thomas, told Newsmax on Thursday that she never thought the day would come "where there would be any type of apology, any type of recognition, that they were wrong" with allowing Thomas to compete on the women's team.

"The University of Pennsylvania is admitting that they were wrong based on how they treated me and how they treated my teammates during that season," Scanlan, now the director of Early Vote Action and a senior fellow with the American Principles Project, said on "Wake Up America."

The U.S. Department of Education on Tuesday announced that the University of Pennsylvania agreed to ban transgender women from its women's sports teams, resolving a federal civil rights case that found the school violated the rights of female athletes.

The case was focused on Thomas, who last competed for the Philadelphia school in 2022 and became the first openly transgender athlete to win a Division I title.

Scanlan told Newsmax that she and her teammates were told they were "bigoted and hateful" and were told that they needed to seek "psychological services" when they spoke out against Thomas competing on the women's team.

The settlement came, she added, upon the strength of President Donald Trump and his administration, which had forced Penn to the negotiating table under threat of referring the matter to the Justice Department for investigation or cutting federal funding.

Scanlan added that had the matter not been resolved, Thomas' name would have remained on the school record boards for future generations to see and think that "'wow, it's amazing that this random female athlete many, many years ago swam these almost unachievable times" without knowing the situation.

Scanlan said she encourages other female athletes to keep fighting against transgender athletes participating in women's sports.

"Lia Thomas first started competing almost four years ago," she said. "Now, the amount of progress we made, the amount of people that have joined in on speaking out on this issue, it's been incredible to see. Now, the majority of Americans agree with us. When we first started, this was something that no one was willing to talk about."

Scanlan added that she hopes the settlement will set a precedent.

"A lot of people look up to the Ivy League institutions," she said. "A lot of people put them up on this pedestal and think that they're amazing at everything that they do. I don't believe that. ... I can tell you firsthand it's not true, but a lot of people in this country do believe that. So I'm hoping that a lot of these high schools and middle schools and other leagues that are looking into how they should put their policy for this issue, are going to see what the University of Pennsylvania did."

She also said other schools should fear the Trump administration and that she hopes it continues to crack down on other schools allowing transgender athletes in women's sports.

"There have been many other colleges, even, that have been offenders in allowing men into women's spaces and onto women's sports teams," Scanlan said.

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