The U.S. Department of Education announced today that the University of Pennsylvania has entered into a Resolution Agreement to address Title IX compliance. This follows an April ruling by the Department’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR), which found that the university violated federal sex discrimination laws.
Penn was found to have “violated Title IX by denying women equal opportunities by permitting males to compete in women’s intercollegiate athletics and to occupy women-only intimate facilities.”
The Department of Education initially gave Penn 10 days from April 28 to “voluntarily resolve these violations or risk a referral to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) for enforcement proceedings,” with news of the finalized agreement released just hours ago.
According to the U.S. Department of Education’s press release, the signed resolution agreement requires Penn to carry out the following action items:
- UPenn will restore to female athletes all individual UPenn Division I swimming records, titles, or similar recognitions which were misappropriated by male athletes allowed to compete in female categories.
- UPenn will issue a public statement to the University community stating that it will comply with Title IX, specifying that UPenn will not allow males to compete in female athletic programs or occupy Penn Athletics female intimate facilities.
- The statement will specify that UPenn will adopt biology-based definitions for the words ‘male’ and ‘female’ pursuant to Title IX and consistent with President Trump’s Executive Orders “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism” and “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports.”
- UPenn will post the statement in a prominent location on its main website and on each of its websites for women’s athletics.
- UPenn will rescind any guidance which violated Title IX, remove or revise any internal and public-facing statements or documents that are inconsistent with Title IX, and notify all staff and women’s athletics of all such rescissions.
- UPenn will send a personalized letter of apology to each impacted female swimmer.
“This is a complex issue, and I’m pleased we were able to reach a resolution through the standard OCR process for concluding Title IX investigations,” UPenn President J. Larry Jameson said in a news release.
“Penn has always followed — and continues to follow — Title IX, along with the NCAA’s policies on transgender athletes. NCAA eligibility rules changed in February 2025 with Executive Orders 14168 and 14201, and Penn will continue to comply with these updated standards,” he said.
“Penn has never maintained a policy of its own regarding the participation of transgender athletes in intercollegiate sports. Nor do we maintain our own policies related to other NCAA rules. We adhere to NCAA and Ivy League rules that are designed to ensure fair and transparent athletic competitions for all schools and participants,” he continued.
“We will review and update the women’s swimming records from that season to reflect who would now hold them under the current eligibility guidelines,” he added.
The federal investigation centered around Penn’s decision to allow Lia Thomas, a transgender woman, to compete on its women’s swimming and diving team during the 2021–22 season.
Thomas, who previously swam for three seasons on Penn’s men’s team, went on to qualify for three A-finals at the NCAA Championships, placing 8th in the 100 free, 5th in the 200 free, and winning the title in the 500 free.
At the time, Thomas was in compliance with the NCAA regulations on transgender competition, and Penn was following all guidelines.
To further clarify, Thomas’ NCAA title has not been revoked. However, under the terms of the resolution agreement, her records have been removed from Penn’s official women’s swimming record book.
The school has already updated its website, erasing Thomas’ individual marks of 47.37, 1:41.93, and 4:33.24 in the 100, 200, and 500 freestyle, respectively, and listing Kayla Fu (48.61), Virginia Burns (1:45.51), and Anna Kalandadze (4:37.21) as the current record holders. They have yet to update the 400 free relay record, which Thomas was apart of in 2022.
Re-writing history is ridiculous. Lia Thomas did not cheat, she competed based on eligibility rules she met. There are pictures online that show the UPenn swim teams that have Lia Thomas as a member. Should they airbrush her out?
Yes
Y
Lia did follow the rules existing at the time she swam, and it is unfortunate that she is the only one to pay the price. There should be blowback for the NCAA as well as the Ivy League for instituting such blatantly unfair rules that were anti biological women and went against all common sense. That said, the real crime was how UPENN treated their female swimmers and how it gaslit the female swimmers’ feelings of unease and unfairness. Furthermore, Mike Schnurr should be fired for being a poor leader and only caring about winning without taking his women’s teams feelings into account. Complete disgrace for the school.
As a 6-U, my son broke the 25y free record at a local pool during summer league. They didn’t count it. Something about not having two timers or some BS, but I’m pretty sure that its bc all the high dollar boosters from the local university that support that summer league team didn’t like the fact that someone broke on of their records.
Whatever. We’ve enjoyed STOMPING that team since…
I’m not clear if you are being serious or making a joke.
Clearly joking
She was following the rules at the time. Should we go back and take away the supersuit records too?
What a terrible comparison. Everyone had access to the supersuits. Not everyone had the biological advantages Lia did.
The point is she followed the rules. And the thing about rules is, sometimes you really hate them but there’s that saying, “them’s the rules…”
Rules that have no rational basis have no reason to exist and are void ab initio. Think of all the old “Jim Crow” laws that so many Southern states still had/have on their books even after the Federal Government effectively banned racial discrimination with the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Right but did those laws go back and change results from that time period? Those changed laws going FORWARD but didn’t erase any of the damage already done. Didn’t change any election results even though now Black people could vote, didn’t give them any land back that was confiscated… etc
nothing makes me laugh more than non-lawyers trying to use legal concepts. My friend, if all rules that had no rational basis were void ab initio, we’d have a lot fewer laws, haha.
Consider the expungement of past criminal convictions for pot possession in most (if not all) states that have legalized it, my friend. Or marriages and contracts annulled for one reason or another because they violated legitimate government policies against things like polygamy and discrimination, respectively. Or better yet, consider the removal of the heinous dispossession laws of Nazi Germany that has resulted in the return of much, but certainly not all, wrongfully taken property to their rightful Jewish owners or descendants. Sure, not every injustice of the past perpetrated under the guise of government sanction has, or will be, corrected. But one can dream. Know of what you speak before you spout.
Thanks for giving me a laugh as I sit at my office reviewing my five millionth pleading, haha. Btw I turned down UVA Law school to go to a higher-ranked one, but Charlottesville was so pretty that I sometimes regret it!
I pity your clients. But don’t worry, after 5MM, you’re bound to get it right one of these days. BTW, I went to a higher-ranked law school, too.
Sure they did. All of us can go to the hospital and start transitioning. You and I choose not to. That doesn’t mean those advantages weren’t available to us.
So is it a choice now?
Sure. You can choose to transition anytime you want. You have that Right.
But I like how you acknowledge that choices were available, and some people didn’t make those choices. And that your post about tech-suits being a terrible analogy was wrong. Thanks!
You use “choosing to transition” as easy and commonplace as choosing to have oj any given day–
Ridiculous comparison-
Dawg, some people are never going to get it, and it’s truly shocking this pervasive denial of logic and reason. It has become an exercise in futility almost not worth partaking. Enjoy a small victory when it happens.
wrong, suits were very expensive, therefore everybody did not have equal access to them
On a side note, at the 2009 World Aquatic Championships general meeting, I witnessed an impassioned coach from the KSA argue against the prohibition of the super-suits just after the USA National Team Director argued the antitheses. He communicated that by covering the legs, arms, torso, neck and head, Muslim females of Islamic religion could continue to be included in the sport. History tells us which side we landed on and what we prioritized. History always repeats itself (more accurately, human kind always repeats itself).
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” – George Santayana
Yes
She should have known it was UNSPORTSMANLIKE to compete against biological women. I’m all for trans people playing sports with their own competitions, records etc.
A right and much needed step forward in women’s rights. Happy for all the young girls who will come behind the brave female athletes who spoke up and spoke out at great risk in today’s cancel culture.
Cancel culture is a thing on both sides. Just ask Bud Light and Target – couple years ago they had to stop printing some pride-related t shirts bc of the online vitriol from the right. Trump has canceled multiple people who disagree with him on twitter over the years…
Lol just ask “the world’s richest man” who is currently being threatened with cancellation. Literal cancellation – of his visa – for saying that Trump, who ran on a platform of cutting government spending, is not cutting government spending.
First off, if you are referring to Musk, he is a U.S. citizen — he’s not on a visa, so there’s nothing to “literally cancel.” He became a citizen back in 2002. You can’t revoke a visa someone doesn’t have.
Second, trying to spin that into some kind of “cancel culture” moment is just… weird. Immigration status and social backlash are two completely different things. Mixing them up like that is just confusing on purpose.
So yeah, the majority of this comment kind of falls apart when you look at the details.
Well, at least this will bring to an end the cheap Kardashianesque act Riley Gaines has turned into a profession.
…oh, & I’m just kidding. But maybe I had you there for a moment.
Death, taxes, the NY Jets won’t win the Super Bowl & Riley Gaines will continue the animus for coin act. These are 4 things we simply need to accept. So today I will be a better Buddha & accept that life is suffering. Go Riley, go. Freedom, patriotic Under Armor swag & lightly fermented grains in aluminum cans for all!
You didn’t have to do the Jets like that.
It’s true, but you didn’t have to throw them in there
I’m a New Yorker. I feel your pain.
Lot of the Lia Thomas defenders in the comments here clearly never swam at a competitive level to where they saw the drastic difference between high level male and female swimmers
Her times are not high level men’s times. Those are consistent with female college swimming times.
Because she wasn’t a high level male swimmer before she transitioned.
She was a 4:18 in the 500 FR before her transition. Is that not high level? Such a an uninformed take
4:18 will never win men’s NCAA’s…. but womens? back off the pace just a bit and it’s still an easy win. That’s the point Mde is making
Katie ledecky went under 4:30 18x. Claire Weinstein, Katie grimes, Leah smith and summer McIntosh have also been under 4:30. Lia Thomas? Over 4 seconds away from the 4:30 mark. She only won the 500 because the event was weak that year. She lost her other 2 events by a significant margin. Why didn’t she back off the pace in those events?
If you’ve been following Nancy Hogshead and Riley Gaines’ versions of events (aka lies), I can see why you might believe this, but it isn’t true. While competing on the men’s team as just a sophomore, Lia finished 2nd at Ivies in the 500, 1000, and 1650 freestyles. She was 34th in the mile in the 2018-2019 season, very-nearly qualifying for NCAAs as just a sophomore.
Yes Lia certainly had more success on the women’s team, and the forever mystery will be what would have happened with three more years of development while on the men’s team without taking HRT, and that we will never know. But we can stop pretending that Lia was some kind of NAIA walk-on who… Read more »
Thomas: Ranked 65 in the 500 Free in 2018-2019 season
I am firmly in the camp that Lia Thomas (and any MtF) should not partake in women’s sports but let’s end the “wasn’t a good swimmer” charade now. William Thomas was an elite Ivy League swimmer with high-level times, period. The issue is carrying that development as a male, the lung capacity, the heart size, the plain old height and weight, body measurements, etc. that went along with it.. into women’s swimming. It’s just not fair. It sucks for people with this dysphoria, but it’s just life, genetically this person is male although socially they are not.
I didn’t say she wasn’t good, I said that she wasn’t elite in reference to her success at women’s NCAAs for all the reasons you listed.
Good/elite etc. is always relative.
Not so! He was pretty high level- and one of the best on Penn’s team!
Lia won ncaas but if we’re being honest she wasn’t even that good.
83% of Americans believe that transgender people deserve the same rights as other Americans. But, 76% oppose transgender women participating in female sports. Lot’s of down votes on those posts that support these percentages???
I don’t think you have a right to compete in elite level sport especially in a protected closed competition for women who would be disadvantaged if they competed against men.
“I don’t think you have a right to compete”
Correct. Competing in a sport is a “privilege”.
Being protected from Discrimination by and from an entity that purports to represent the entire public sphere (like the NCAA) is a “right”. Its called Public Accommodations.
83% of Americans have no clue about a good male swimmers on the men’s team for 3 years who changed to a ‘woman’ and swam against females-
This science is an ongoing experiment and this resolution moves the experiment forward!
Please post the source for the 85% number you reference. Looking at numbers from Pew Research, it appears that number is in the low 60’s.