UPenn to ban transgender athletes, feds say, ending civil rights case focused on swimmer Lia Thomas

By COLLIN BINKLEY Associated Press WASHINGTON AP The University of Pennsylvania has agreed to ban transgender women from its women s sports teams to resolve a federal civil rights situation that identified the school violated the rights of female athletes The U S Learning Department communicated the voluntary agreement Tuesday The affair focused on Lia Thomas the transgender swimmer who last competed for the Ivy League school in Philadelphia in when she became the first openly transgender athlete to win a Division I title It s part of the Trump administration s broader attempt to remove transgender athletes from girls and women s sports Under the agreement Penn agreed to restore all individual Division I swimming records and titles to female athletes who lost out to Thomas the Coaching Department declared Penn also agreed to send a personalized apology letter to each of those swimmers It wasn t this instant clear whether Thomas would be stripped of her awards and honors at Penn Related Articles Sanitation workers walk off the job after contract negotiations falter Mayors professional groups sue over Trump s efforts to restrict Obamacare enrollment Justice Department says Chinese nationals charged with spying inside the US for Beijing HHS layoffs were likely unlawful and must be halted US judge says Major reports about how environment change affects the US are removed from websites The university must also announce that it will not allow males to compete in female athletic programs and it must adopt biology-based definitions of male and female the department reported Tuition Secretary Linda McMahon called it a success for women and girls The Department commends UPenn for rectifying its past harms against women and girls and we will continue to fight relentlessly to restore Title IX s proper application and enforce it to the fullest extent of the law McMahon noted in a announcement The Instruction Department opened its review in February and concluded in April that Penn had violated Title IX a law forbidding sex discrimination in tuition Such findings have almost consistently been resolved through voluntary agreements If Penn had fought the finding the department could have moved to refer the occurrence to the Justice Department or pursued a separate process to cut the school s federal funding In February the Guidance Department inquired the NCAA and the National Federation of State High School Associations or NFSHSA to restore titles awards and records it says have been misappropriated by biological males competing in female categories The largest part obvious target at the college level was in women s swimming where Thomas won the national title in the -yard freestyle in The NCAA has updated its record books when recruiting and other violations have stripped titles from certain schools but the organization like the NFSHSA has not responded to the federal establishment s request Determining which events had a transgender athlete participating years later would be challenging The Associated Press guidance coverage receives financial endorsement from multiple private foundations AP is solely responsible for all content Find AP s standards for working with philanthropies a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP org