The Daily Pennsylvanian took a look back at Lia Thomas' journey to Penn and her impact in her years after.
Credit: Jesse ZhangOn Wednesday, the Trump administration announced it would freeze $175 million of Penn’s federal funding, attributing the decision to alleged Title IX violations from allowing 2022 College graduate and transgender woman Lia Thomas to compete for Penn women’s swimming and diving while at Penn. The Daily Pennsylvanian took a look back at Thomas’ journey to Penn, her time representing Penn Athletics, and her impact after graduation.
Thomas’ time on the men's swim team
Thomas, an Austin, Texas native, graduated high school in 2017 and was recruited to swim for the Penn men’s swimming and diving team, for which she started to compete in the 2017-18 season. Thomas had been attracted to Penn because of her brother who swam for the Red and Blue and appreciation of coach Mike Schnur, according to Sports Illustrated.
Thomas had a strong first-year campaign, culminating in three championship final appearances at the 2018 Ivy League men’s swimming and diving championships in the distance freestyle events — 500-yard, 1000, and 1650 freestyle.
Notably, Thomas told Sports Illustrated that she first started questioning her gender identity in high school and during her first collegiate swim season and came out to her family as transgender during the summer between her freshman and sophomore seasons.
In the following season with the Red and Blue men’s team, Thomas improved her performance, finishing second in the same three distance events at the 2019 Ivy Championship.
“I was very depressed,” Thomas told Sports Illustrated as she struggled with feelings of gender dysphoria during that season.
Thomas’ transition
Following the conclusion of the swim season, in May 2019, Thomas began hormone replacement therapy — and she was initially worried it could end her athletic career. After feeling “mentally, a lot better and healthier pretty quickly” while continuing to swim over the summer, Thomas realized she wanted to continue competing as her authentic self — as a member of the women’s swim team.
In the following fall of her junior year, Thomas came out as trans to her coaches, who were supportive, and then to the members of the men’s and women’s teams. At the time, the NCAA’s rules allowed athletes to change gender categories, but athletes had to complete a year of hormone therapy before transitioning to their new team. Thomas continued to compete on the men’s team during the 2019-20 season while continuing hormone therapy. She competed in four total dual meets during the regular season.
On March 11, 2020, when the Ivy League canceled spring athletics due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Thomas decided to take a gap year in 2020-21 — preserving a year of NCAA eligibility. Her hormone replacement therapy continued for two years until her return to the pool for the 2021-22 season.
Return to competition on women’s team
Thomas returned to practice with the Penn women’s swimming and diving team in summer 2021 and, as previously reported by the DP, began attracting national attention after a standout performance at the Zippy Invitational in December of that year. Thomas notched the nation’s fastest times of the season in the 200 and 500 freestyle events.
She continued to swim with the women’s team for the rest of the regular season as both Penn Athletics and the Ivy League released statements in support of her participation.
However, on Jan. 19, 2022, the NCAA Board of Governors voted to enact a “sport-by-sport approach” to transgender athletes’ participation as of the 2022-23 academic year — essentially deferring transgender participation policies to the sport’s larger governing body, which, in this case, was USA Swimming.
On Feb. 1, 2022, USA Swimming updated its policies regarding the participation of transgender athletes in women’s sports, which included requiring them to provide evidence of concentration of testosterone in the athlete’s serum to be less than 5 nmol/L continuously for 36 months. At that point, according to Sports Illustrated, Thomas had only 34 months of HRT.
Around the same time, while Thomas had stated that the team supported her participation on the women’s team, 16 Penn swimmers anonymously signed a letter stating Thomas was taking away “competitive opportunities” from them in meets such as the Ivy League championship. However, the NCAA ruled on Feb. 10, 2022, that there would be no changes to the organization’s testosterone policies for the 2022 championships, allowing Thomas to compete.
At the 2022 Ivy League championships, Thomas secured three Ivy League titles and program records — performances that qualified her for the 2022 NCAA Division I Swimming and Diving Championships for the first time in her career. On the national stage, she won an NCAA title in the 500 free and tied for fifth in the 200 free with University of Kentucky alum Riley Gaines — who has since gone on to publicly speak out against the inclusion of transgender athletes in women’s sports. That summer, Penn nominated Thomas for NCAA Woman of the Year.
Thomas told Sports Illustrated in March 2022 that she planned on attending law school and competing at the 2024 United States Swimming Olympic Trials and reiterated these plans the following summer.
Her impact after Penn
In June 2022, World Aquatics (formerly FINA), swimming’s world governing body, announced that it voted to require transgender swimmers to have completed their transition by the age of 12 to compete in women’s events and maintain their circulating testosterone below the levels of 2.5 nmol/L, effectively barring most transgender women from elite women’s swimming events. Thomas told ESPN that FINA’s decision was “deeply upsetting … [and] discriminatory and will only serve to harm all women.” The decision effectively eliminated Thomas’ plans for Olympic competition.
Thomas did not compete in any swim meets after graduating from Penn and focused on pursuing her law degree.
In March 2023, the World Athletics Council, the international governing body for track and field, announced new policies banning trans women — specifically those who have gone through puberty — from participating in the sport.
Thomas responded to the ruling in a statement to ABC, stating “This ruling is devastating and only detrimental to women’s sports. It only serves to exclude any women who are not deemed woman enough. Trans women are women. Intersex women are women.”
After, Thomas continued advocating for transgender athletes’ inclusion in sports, through her Instagram and on a podcast with friend and fellow transgender athlete Schuyler Bailar, but did not compete in any swimming competitions for the rest of the year.
In September 2023, Thomas filed an arbitration case in Switzerland’s Court of Arbitration for Sport, arguing that the 2022 rules are “discriminatory” and cause “profound harm to trans women” that became public knowledge in January 2024.
During this time, two activists, Gaines and 2022 Engineering graduate and Thomas’ former teammate Paula Scanlan, built strong platforms advocating against transgender athletes’ inclusion in women’s sports.
Thomas stayed out of the public eye for the rest of 2023 and the beginning of 2024.
During the summer preceding the 2024 U.S. Swimming Olympic Trials, the Court of Arbitration for Sport dismissed Thomas’ case, citing her lack of standing to challenge the policies since she is not a current member of USA Swimming. She notably did not and still has not competed in any swim competitions since the 2022 NCAA championships.
On Sept. 9, 2024, Thomas continued transgender advocacy work and served as the keynote speaker at the Philly Trans Wellness Conference, where she talked about her experience as a trans athlete and the national attention that came with it.
Thomas stayed out of the public eye for the rest of 2024, while 1968 Wharton graduate and President Donald Trump kept the idea of protecting women’s sports at the center of his campaign promises.
On Feb. 4, 2025, after the start of Trump’s second administration, three former Penn swimmers filed a lawsuit against Penn, Harvard University, the Ivy League, and the NCAA for violating Title IX by allowing Thomas to compete in the 2022 women’s swimming and diving championships.
The next day, notably on National Girls and Women in Sports Day, Trump signed an executive order explicitly barring transgender women from participating in women’s sports.
The executive order promised to “rescind all funds from educational programs that deprive women and girls of fair athletic opportunities, which results in the endangerment, humiliation, and silencing of women and girls and deprives them of privacy.”
Citing Title IX, the order claimed that schools with federal funding could not allow transgender women to compete in athletics because they “cannot deny women an equal opportunity to participate in sports.”
The next day, on Feb. 6, the U.S. Department of Education launched an investigation into Penn, alleging Title IX violations for allowing Thomas to compete for Penn women’s swimming and diving during the 2021-22 season.
On Feb. 7, the NCAA’s Board of Governors voted to approve a policy change officially restricting women’s sports to only biologically female athletes, effective immediately. Per the new policy, the NCAA now prohibits student-athletes assigned male at birth or student-athletes assigned female at birth who have begun hormone therapy from competing on an NCAA women’s team.
The following week, on Feb. 11, the DOE sent a letter to the presidents of the NCAA and the National Federation of State High School Associations urging them to reallocate titles and awards earned by transgender athletes. This action put Thomas’ program, Ivy League, conference-level, and national accolades and records at risk of being eliminated from the record books.
On Wednesday, the Trump administration announced that it would be following through on its promise made in the aforementioned executive order by freezing over $175 million of Penn’s federal funding, citing the University’s failure to bar transgender athletes from women’s sports. According to a White House tweet, Wednesday’s decision was a result of Penn’s “policies forcing women to compete with men in sports.”
“This is just a taste of what could be coming down the pipe for Penn,” one senior Trump administration official told Fox News.
In a statement to the DP, a senior White House official wrote that the funding freeze was not a result of an ongoing Title IX investigation into Penn but rather “[an] immediate proactive action to review discretionary funding streams to … universities.”
The official said that the decision to cut funding was made because Penn “infamously permitted a male to compete on its women’s swimming team.” They added that the cuts would be made to federal funding that Penn receives from the Department of Defense and the Department of Health and Human Services.
A Penn spokesperson wrote in a statement to the DP that while the University is “aware of media reports suggesting a suspension of $175 million in federal funding,” the federal government has yet to share “any official notification or any details” about the recent action.
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