Former Kentucky swimmer Riley Gaines was among more than a dozen college athletes who filed a lawsuit against the NCAA on Thursday, accusing it of violating their Title IX rights by allowing transgender woman Lia Thomas to compete at the national championships in 2022.
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Atlanta, details the shock Gaines and other swimmers felt when they learned they would have to share a locker room with Thomas at the championships in Atlanta. It documents a number of races they swam in with Thomas, including the 200-yard final in which Thomas and Gaines tied for fifth but Thomas, not Gaines, was handed the fifth-place trophy.
Thomas swam for Pennsylvania. She competed for the men’s team at Penn before her gender transition.
Thomas was the first openly transgender athlete to win a Division I title in any sport, finishing in front of three Olympic medalists for the championship. By not making the final, the lawsuit mentions that Florida swimmer Tylor Mathieu, who was not a plaintiff, was denied first-team All-American honors in that event.
Other plaintiffs included athletes from volleyball and track.
No straight male would be able to perform at the highest levels of female sports with no effort. The issue is that few, if any, women can compete at the highest levels with men regardless of how much effort they put in. So I’m not sure that it’s a good argument that simply because a trans woman would still need to work to get there, that they should be allowed.
There are biological differences. I’m not taking a stand on whether or not trans female athletes should be able to compete with biological females. I’ve listened to a lot of discussions about this and there doesn’t appear to be any good metric and so I’m on the fence with it.