Former Penn Swimmers Sue Harvard For Allowing Trans Athletes To Compete

Multiple former swimmers at the University of Pennsylvania sued Harvard in federal court for allegedly violating Title IX by allowing transgender swimmer Lia Thomas to compete at the 2022 Ivy League Swimming & Diving Championships.

The suit — filed against Harvard, Penn, the National Collegiate Athletic Association, and the Ivy League — alleges that each defendant violated Title IX regulations by allowing a “trans-identifying male swimmer” to compete in the women’s championship hosted at Harvard.

The lawsuit comes one day before President Donald Trump is expected to sign an executive order barring transgender women from competing in girls’ and women’s sports, following his campaign promise to handle “the transgender issue” in women’s collegiate athletics.

The suit claims Harvard is at fault for allowing Thomas to compete at the Ivy Championships, which it hosted on campus at Blodgett Pool. The plaintiffs also allege that Harvard violated Title IX by not providing a “unisex bathroom or separate bathroom for Thomas to use or for any other women to use who did not want to use the Women’s Locker room while Thomas was using it.”

Faculty of Arts and Sciences spokesperson James M. Chisholm wrote in a statement that the University does not comment on active litigation.

Thomas, who swam for Penn and graduated in 2022, won the Ivy League championship her senior year in the 500 freestyle, 100 freestyle, and 200 freestyle individually, as well as the 400 freestyle relay.

Her victory sparked a backlash against transgender athletes’ participation in women’s sports. Sixteen athletes — led by Riley Gaines, a University of Kentucky swimmer — sued the NCAA over its eligibility policy for trans competitors.

Shortly before the 2022 Harvard meet, the NCAA adopted sport-specific regulations on transgender athletes, based on guidelines from each sport’s governing board. USA Swimming regulations require that athletes assigned male at birth must suppress their testosterone for 36 months while keeping their levels of the hormone under a maximum threshold.

The suit argues that Thomas had not been suppressing her testosterone for 36 months before competition, claiming that there had been no scientific analysis “conducted to establish Thomas did not retain male competitive advantage.”

The plaintiffs asserted that Thomas’s victory “displaces the names of rightful women champions in Harvard’s Blodgett Pool and at UPenn,” attributing Thomas’s victory to the sex she was assigned at birth.

Thomas could not be reached for comment.

The lawsuit alleged that the Ivy League and its leadership “labored for months behind the scenes to engineer a public shock and awe display of monolithic support for biological unreality and radical gender ideology by America’s oldest and most storied educational institutions.”

The suit claims that the 2010 NCAA Transgender Student-Athlete Participation Policy — which allowed trans female athletes undergoing testosterone-suppressing treatment to compete on women’s teams after one year of treatment — was “intentionally designed and was purposefully implemented” by the NCAA to give its member institutions “an excuse for violating Title IX by allowing men to compete on women’s teams in intercollegiate sports.”

The plaintiffs alleged that the regulation prioritized the rights of trans women over those of people assigned female at birth.

Harvard Athletics’ Transgender Inclusion Policy states that “Harvard Athletics actively seeks to create a space that is welcoming and inclusive to all identities; including but not limited to gender, gender identity, gender expression, and sexual orientation.” The policy then defers to the NCAA rules for its athlete participation policy.

Schuyler M. Bailar ’19, the openly first transgender swimmer to compete in the NCAA Division I, competed for Harvard's men’s team.

The three swimmers who brought the suit — Grace Estabrook, Ellen Holmquist, and Margot Kaczorowski — competed alongside Thomas at Penn between 2018 and 2024. At the 2022 championship, the three athletes allege that “Thomas competing on the UPenn women’s team deprived Ellen Holmquist the opportunity to compete in the 2022 Ivy League Championships.”

Although Estabrook and Kaczorowski were able to compete at the race, the suit alleges that the swimmers finished one place lower than what they would have if Thomas had not been allowed to compete.

Kazcorowski was the only swimmer of the plaintiffs to compete in an individual event against Thomas — the 100 and 200 freestyle — where Kazcorowski placed sixth and seventh, respectively.

Bill Bock, the plaintiffs’ attorney, wrote in a statement that “the Ivy League believed that if America’s oldest and most storied educational institutions led the way, Americans would suppress common sense and submit to radical policies that steal young women’s cherished sports opportunities and obliterate biological reality.”

“This lawsuit exposes the behind the scenes scheming that led to the attempt by Harvard University, UPenn, the Ivy League and the NCAA, to impose radical gender ideology on the American college sports landscape,” he added.

The plaintiffs seek “damages for pain and suffering, mental and emotional distress, suffering and anxiety, expenses costs and other damages against the NCAA, Ivy League, Harvard, and UPenn due to their wrongful conduct.”

The suit comes amid a legal retrenchment for trans rights.

On Jan. 20, Trump signed an executive order instructing federal agencies to remove any internal and external communications and policies that “promote or otherwise inculcate gender ideology.”

Trump also reverted Title IX regulations to those put in place during his first term in office. The changes walked back Biden-era rules that expanded Title IX protections for trans students, which a federal judge had overturned in January.

—Staff writer Elyse C. Goncalves can be reached at elyse.goncalves@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @e1ysegoncalves.

—Staff writer Akshaya Ravi can be reached at akshaya.ravi@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @akshayaravi22.