More than a dozen college athletes filed a lawsuit against the NCAA on Thursday, accusing the organization of violating their Title IX rights by allowing transgender women to compete in collegiate competitions and allowing them to share locker rooms with women.
Transgender swimmer Lia Thomas is at the center of the lawsuit after the NCAA allowed her to compete at the national championships in 2022. The lawsuit claims that both the NCAA and Georgia Tech, which hosted the event, violated Title IX, the federal statute that guarantees equal opportunity for men and women in college education and sports, by allowing a transgender woman to compete as a woman.
The lawsuit demands that the NCAA to strip any and all awards from transgender athletes in women’s competitions and “reassign” them to other women. The lawsuit also demands “damages for pain and suffering, mental and emotional distress, suffering and anxiety, expense costs and other damages due to defendants’ wrongful conduct.”
In addition to competitive concerns, the plaintiffs took issue with having to share a locker room with Thomas at the 2022 national championships.
“Never in my 18-year career had I seen a man changing in the locker rooms. I immediately felt the need to cover myself,” former swimmer Kaitlynn Wheeler, one of the plaintiffs, said in the lawsuit. “I could feel the discomfort of the other girls in there.”
Another plaintiff, who chose not to be named, said that she “was shocked to see a naked Thomas 10 feet in front of her and a full frontal view of Thomas’s genitalia.” Thomas had not undergone gender reassignment surgery.
