The University of Pennsylvania has agreed to adopt a slew of reforms to prevent trangender women from participating in women’s sports at the university, the Department of Education says.
The policy overhaul will resolve a federal civil rights case brought against the school after it allowed transgender swimmer Lia Thomas to compete for the women’s team in the 2021 to 2022 season.
Per the agreement, announced by the education department late Tuesday, the Philadelphia-based Ivy League school will adopt definitions for male and female that are consistent with biological sex, ban biological males from competing in athletic programs or occupying female facilities, erase Lia Thomas’s records from the school’s books, and retroactively award titles to female athletes who lost out.
The school will also send personalized letters of apology to each female swimmer who was impacted by Lia Thomas’s inclusion on the team.
Secretary of Education Linda McMahon hailed the agreement as a “great victory for women and girls not only at the University of Pennsylvania, but all across our nation.”
Ms. McMahon further commended the school for “rectifying its past harms against women and girls” and pledged to “continue to fight relentlessly to restore Title IX’s proper application and enforce it to the fullest extent of the law.”
A former swimmer at the University of Pennsylvania, Paula Scanlan, who was among one of the first female swimmers to speak out against her transgender teammate, told Fox News that she is “deeply grateful to the Trump administration for standing firm in protecting women and girls and restoring our rightful accolades.”
“It is because of their strong leadership that my alma mater now knows it has no choice but to begin the process of reforming its policies to uphold women’s rights,” she added. “Today marks a momentous step toward repairing the past mistreatment of female athletes and forging a future where sex discrimination no longer limits girls’ potential.”
The agreement comes a few months after the White House froze $175 million in federal funding to UPenn in light of the school’s transgender athlete policies.
The University of Pennsylvania found itself at the center of the debate over the inclusion of transgender women in women’s sports after Lia Thomas won three individual swimming events in the women’s Ivy League championships. The swimmer had previously competed in the men’s league, before switching over to the women’s division after receiving hormone replacement therapy.
Mr. Trump issued an executive order at the start of his presidency called “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports,” that sought to cut federal funding from educational institutions that allow transgender athletes that were born male but identify as women to compete in female sports.
The National Collegiate Athletic Association, which had previously allowed each sport to determine whether to include transgender athletes in the league, changed its policy to conform with the executive order.
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