The Department of Education announced on April 28 that the University violated Title IX by allowing transgender student-athletes to compete in women's sports.
Credit: Ethan YoungContent warning: This article contains instances of misgendering that may be disturbing and/or triggering for some readers.
The Department of Education announced that Penn violated Title IX by allowing transgender athletes to compete in women’s intercollegiate athletics and issued three demands to the University on Monday.
In its April 28 announcement, the Education Department included a “Resolution Agreement” from the Office for Civil Rights that gives Penn 10 days to “voluntarily” comply with three demands: issuing a statement affirming compliance with Title IX, restoring accolades to “female athletes … misappropriated” by transgender athletes, and sending individual letters to the affected athletes. According to the statement, OCR informed Penn President Larry Jameson of the demands on Monday.
If Penn does not comply with the demands, the University risks referral to the Department of Justice for “enforcement proceedings.”
Requests for comment were left with a University spokesperson, the White House, and the Department of Education.
"UPenn has a choice to make: do the right thing for its female students and come into full compliance with Title IX immediately or continue to advance an extremist political project that violates federal antidiscrimination law and puts UPenn’s federal funding at risk,” Education Department Acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Craig Trainor wrote in the announcement.
The announcement and demands come exactly one week after Penn motioned to dismiss a lawsuit, which was filed on Feb. 4 by three former Penn swimmers alleging Title IX violations, stemming from 2022 College graduate and transgender woman Lia Thomas being allowed to compete for Penn women’s swimming and diving in the 2022 Ivy League championships.
Thomas represented Penn women’s swimming and diving during the 2021-22 competition season.
On Feb. 5, President and 1968 Wharton graduate Donald Trump signed an executive order barring transgender athletes from women’s sports and promising to “rescind all funds from educational programs that deprive women and girls of fair athletic opportunities.”
The White House announced on March 19 that it would freeze more than $175 million in federal funding to Penn, citing the University’s alleged failure to bar transgender athletes from women’s sports.
At the time, a senior White House official wrote in a statement to The Daily Pennsylvanian that the funding freeze was not a result of the Title IX investigation into Penn but rather an “immediate proactive action to review discretionary funding streams to … universities.”
A Penn spokesperson wrote in a March 20 statement to the DP that the University has “always followed NCAA and conference policies regarding student participation on athletic teams.” The spokesperson added that Penn does not have its own policy “separate from its governing bodies” in regards to “transgender athletes” and pointed to policy revisions made by the NCAA and Ivy League in response to Trump’s February executive order.
“Penn is in full compliance with this most recent change,” the spokesperson wrote. “The University’s athletic programs have always operated within the framework provided by the federal government, the NCAA and our conference.”
Paula Scanlan, a 2022 Engineering graduate and former Penn swimmer, praised the announcement from the Education Department in a post on X, the site formerly known as Twitter, writing that it was “About time for some accountability after they put a man in my locker room 18 times per week.”
She wrote in a separate post, “So is my alma mater finally going to issue me an apology or are they just going to pretend like this didn’t happen?”
While representing women’s swimming and diving, Thomas collected multiple accolades in the conference and national levels — including an NCAA championship, two still-standing individual Ivy League records, three individual Ivy League titles, and three still-standing individual program records.
All of Thomas’ records are at risk of being reallocated or eliminated from the record books following the Education Department’s announcement on Monday.
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