This week, more than a dozen former college athletes filed a lawsuit against the NCAA for allowing transgender athletes to compete in collegiate competitions. While the lawsuit centers primarily around competitive fairness, it also aims to keep transgender women out of women’s locker rooms.
The lawsuit centers around Lia Thomas, a transgender swimmer who competed at the 2022 NCAA Swimming Championships while a student at the University of Pennsylvania. While at the event, Thomas shared a locker room with other women, where she changed in front of them and they changed in front of her.
The lawsuit addresses that, accusing the NCAA of “destroying female safe spaces in women’s locker rooms,” in a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. It also claims the NCAA allows “naked men possessing full male genitalia to disrobe in front of non-consenting college women” and creates “situations in which unwilling female college athletes unwittingly or reluctantly exposed their unclad bodies to males, subjecting women to a loss of their constitutional right to bodily privacy.”
“Never in my 18-year career had I seen a man changing in the locker rooms. I immediately felt the need to cover myself,” said former swimmer Kaitlynn Wheeler, one of the plaintiffs in the case, according to The Free Press. “I could feel the discomfort of the other girls in there.”
The lawsuit aims to keep transgender athletes out of women’s locker rooms.
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