(Washington) The University of Pennsylvania has undertaken to no longer accept transgender sportsmen in its female teams, after the controversy around the case of the swimmer Lia Thomas, the American department of education announced on Tuesday.
This agreement follows a recent investigation by the Department of Education, which relied on a federal law prohibiting any sex discrimination in educational programs, after the Transgender Lia Thomas swimmer participated in women’s races in 2021 and 2022 with the University based in Philadelphia.
In the words of the agreement, now the prestigious University of the East Coast “will adopt the biological definitions of men and women’s words” and “will not allow men to participate in female sports programs”, according to the department’s press release.
The establishment also undertakes to “return to sportsmen all individual records and titles (…) who have been stolen by male athletes authorized to compete in the female category” and to “send a personalized letter of apology to each swimmer concerned”.
Lia Thomas, the first transgender swimmer to win a university title in the United States in March 2022, after having started her transition in 2019, embodied the burning issue of the participation of transgender sports in the female tests. Its results had triggered a lively controversy, its detractors believing that having competed as a man in the past, it benefited from an unjust physiological advantage.
“The department welcomes the University of Pennsylvania for having corrected the wrong that it has caused in the past to girls and women,” wrote the Secretary of Education Linda McMahon, who sees in this agreement “one more example of the Trump effect”.
Photo Chancey Bush, Archives Associated Press
The United States Secretary of Education, Linda McMahon
“Thanks to the leadership of President Trump, the University of Pennsylvania agreed to apologize (…) and to ensure that women’s sport is protected for future generations,” she said.
Donald Trump had promised during the presidential campaign to end the “transgender delirium”. The republican president launched the offensive against the participation of transgender sportsmen in female competitions shortly after his return to the White House in January by threatening to cut federal subsidies to organizations that would not go in his direction.
At the international level, the swimming federation, such as those of athletics and cycling for example, requires to date a transition “before puberty”, which is equivalent in practice to quasi-exclusion, as most countries do not allow such precocious gender change.
