Lia Thomas made history in 2022 when she became the first openly transgender athlete to win an NCAA Division I national championship, one of the greatest awards in U.S. college sports. Thomas’s win in women’s swimming for the University of Pennsylvania got a lot of national attention and immediately became a major source of contention in the larger discussion about including transgender people in sports.
Now, because of a major policy change by the federal government, Thomas’ NCAA medals and records are going to be taken away. This is a big and controversial change. One of the first things President Donald Trump did after taking office in early 2025 was sign an executive order that dealt directly with transgender people playing sports. The decision effectively stops transgender women from competing in female sports categories in high schools, colleges, and community athletics organizations that get money from the federal government. Trump’s order had robust enforcement measures, and it warned that institutions who didn’t follow it may lose their federal funding.
Because of this new policy and the legal action that followed, the University of Pennsylvania has agreed to change its official athletic record books for the 2021–2022 season. The modifications will take Thomas’ name off the individual women’s swimming records, and her NCAA medals will no longer be valid. The only time that will be recorded is when she was on the 4x100m relay squad. It’s not clear if it will still be formally recognized in the NCAA’s records.
The U.S. Department of Education said that the university had reached a resolution agreement after the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) had been looking into the matter for months. The OCR said that UPenn’s choice to let Thomas compete in women’s competitions broke Title IX, the federal civil rights law that was passed in 1972 and says that schools that get federal money can’t discriminate against students based on their sex.
As part of the agreement, the university will issue formal letters of apology to each female athlete who was thought to have been hurt by Thomas’s participation. The OCR’s report said that the school’s actions “discriminated against cisgender women” because they let a transgender athlete participate in a category that wasn’t in line with her birth-assigned sex.
The University of Pennsylvania said in a public statement that its actions at the time were in conformity with NCAA rules at the time. The university did say, though, that these conditions might have made the competition unfair. The statement said, “We know that some student-athletes were hurt by these rules.” “We understand this and will say sorry to anyone who felt they had a competitive disadvantage or felt anxious because of the rules that were in place at the time.”
Penn’s Lia Thomas won the 500-yard freestyle at the NCAA women’s swimming and diving championships.
— SportsCenter (@SportsCenter) March 17, 2022
Thomas becomes the first known transgender athlete to win an NCAA Division I championship in any sport.
Full story from @katie_barnes3: https://t.co/mYzU5uBDpS pic.twitter.com/zgmIEgKO5x
The decision has started a new national conversation about gender, justice, and inclusion in competitive sports. People who support the judgment say it makes women’s sports fair again and protects possibilities for cisgender female athletes. Critics, on the other hand, see it as a step back for LGBTQ+ rights, especially for transgender people who want to be included and treated equally under the law.
As Thomas’s name is taken out of the record books, the effects of this judgment are likely to be felt in sports, civil rights policy, and public debate for many years to come. Her individual records may no longer hold, but her presence in the national discourse about women and sport is still very important and far from ended.
