Three former members of the University of Pennsylvania swimming team have taken action to expunge the women’s swimming records set by Lia Thomas, a transgender former collegiate swimmer.
Former athletes, Grace Estabrook, Ellen Holmquist and Margot Kaczorowski, sued the university, Harvard University, the NCAA and the Ivy League Council of Presidents over their ‘traumatizing’ experience sharing a team with Thomas.
They accuse the institutions of violating federal law by allowing Thomas to swim against women and share their locker room facilities during the 2021-22 season, according to the lawsuit.
Thomas is not listed as a defendant in the lawsuit, which was filed Tuesday – one day before President Donald Trump officially signed an executive order seeking to keep biological males out of women’s sports.
The complaint is also seeking to create a class-action claim on behalf of 206 female athletes who competed in the 2022 Ivy League Swimming and Diving Championships, which was hosted by Harvard.
The lawsuit seeks to scrub Thomas’s records from the Ivy League, NCAA and Ivy institutions, including Harvard and UPenn, and receive a declaration that the transgender athlete was ineligible to compete.
Three former teammates of Lia Thomas have filed a lawsuit to expunge her records
The plaintiffs argue that allowing the biologically male athlete to compete against women and share a locker room was in violation of Title IX. They claim the experience of competing alongside Thomas left them ‘repeatedly emotionally traumatized.’
The lawsuit alleges that female swimmers ‘became captive and collateral damage to the Ivy League’s illegal social science experiment.’
It further accuses university administrators pushing pro-trans ideology onto the plaintiffs throughout the process of accepting Thomas onto the team and into the locker room.
‘I never expected my Ivy League education to teach me that women must silently accept losing their opportunities and privacy,’ Estabrook said in a press release Wednesday from the Independent Council on Women’s Sports, which is backing the lawsuit.
‘Women’s sports and the leaders who oversee them should not prioritize men’s feelings over fairness and integrity.’
The plaintiffs claim they were led to feel that their concern was a ‘psychological problem’ with the athletes invited to a talk titled, ‘Trans 101.’
‘The UPenn administrators told the women that if anyone was struggling with accepting Thomas’s participation on the UPenn Women’s team, they should seek counseling and support from CAPS and the LBGTQ center,’ the lawsuit alleges.
It also alleges that university administrators warned them against speaking about the situation publicly.
Thomas poses with UPenn teammates Hannah Kannan, Camryn Carter, and Margot Kaczorowski during the 2022 Ivy League Womens Swimming and Diving Championships
The transgender swimmer on the NCAA Division 1 title as a member of UPenn’s women’s team
Thomas, who became the first transgender athlete to win an NCAA Division 1 title in 2022, had competed for the UPenn men’s swimming team from 2017-20 under the name Will Thomas.
According to the lawsuit, Thomas was introduced by women’s swimming head coach Mike Schnur to the women’s swimmers during a team meeting in Fall 2019 as their incoming teammate.
The athletes claim that they had initially been told that Thomas would not be sharing a changing room with them but were left shocked – with Kaczorowski claiming she was even left in tears – to discover that Thomas would in fact be allowed to use the locker room.
Coach Schnur allegedly told the swimmers that he would be fired if he did not allow Thomas to use the locker room.
The three athletes were made to believe that they would be removed from the team if they protested Thomas’s participation ahead of the 2022 Ivy League Championships, the lawsuit alleges.
Thomas went on to finish first in the 500-, 200- and 100-yard freestyle races at the championships. She set pool and Ivy League records, ultimately becoming the highest-scoring swimmer at the entire meet.
On Wednesday, President Trump declared that the war on women’s sports was over.
The 78-year-old surrounded himself with female athletes and activists at the White House to sign an executive order barring trans participation in women’s sports.
President Donald Trump said he would make moves to ensure that no transgender athletes participated in women’s sports at the 2028 summer Olympics, being held in Los Angeles
Trump surrounded himself with female athletes and activists for an executive order signing in the East Room Wednesday, barring trans participation in women’s sports
The order uses Title IX, a law against sex discrimination in taxpayer-funded education programs, to ban transgender girls and women from participating in female school sports activities.
Trump said his new Secretary of State Marco Rubio ‘is going to make clear to the International Olympic Committee’ that ‘America categorically rejects transgender lunacy.’
‘We want them to change everything having to do with the Olympics and having to do with this absolutely ridiculous subject,’ Trump went on.
The pledge was one of Trump’s most popular rallying cries during the 2024 election campaign.
Many college students and their parents expressed concern about opportunities that women were losing because of biological men competing in their sports.
Just last week, Thomas’s former opponents detailed the ‘fear’ and ‘abuse’ they encountered while competing against the transgender swimmer.
‘There (was) no escape from this nightmare,’ one woman told a congressional hearing about facing Thomas, who became the first transgender athlete to win an NCAA Division 1 title in 2022.
There has been growing controversy and debate over the future of women’s sports in recent years and last Thursday, a Georgia state Senate committee passed the ‘Fair and Safe Athletic Opportunities Act’.
Kylee Alons (L) and Kaitlynn Wheeler (R) spoke about their experiences at a hearing last week
The bill ‘would require athletes to participate on teams that align with their biological sex at birth’. Should it pass into law, Georgia would become the 26th state to introduce restrictions around transgender student-athletes.
Thomas won the national championship in Georgia three years ago and two former competitors testified at a hearing last Thursday.
‘We all were just guinea pigs for a giant social experiment formed by the NCAA regarding how much abuse and blatant disregard women would be forced to take in silence,’ Former North Carolina State women’s swimmer Kylee Alons said, per Fox.
According to Fox, Alons claimed she wanted to cry and leave the event after watching Thomas win the 500m freestyle.
‘It all just felt so off and wrong,’ she said. ‘I go to the locker room that day only to see Thomas and realize there is no escape from this nightmare, no matter where I go.
‘I had no idea he was going to be allowed in the women’s locker room as we did not consent to have a man in our locker room… I am immediately on edge every time I enter that locker room afterward, knowing at any moment a man can walk in on me changing.
Alons reportedly resorted to changing in a store cupboard behind the stands, rather than go into the locker room.
Former University of Kentucky swimmer Kaitlynn Wheeler, meanwhile, spoke about her ‘discomfort’ and ‘fear’.
‘Young women, teenage girls were forced to undress next to a fully intact biological male who exposed himself to us, while we were simultaneously fully exposed,’ Wheeler said.
‘We were never asked. We were never given a choice or another option. We were just expected to be OK with it, to shove down our discomfort, our embarrassment, our fear. Because standing up for ourselves would mean being labeled as intolerant or hateful or bigoted.’
Both Wheeler and Lyons joined a lawsuit against the NCAA, led by fellow former swimmer Riley Gaines. She recently hailed Donald Trump as a ‘champion’ for women’s sport after he declared that the federal government will only recognize two sexes – male and female.
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