The University of Pennsylvania’s decision this week to sign an agreement with the Trump administration committing to barring transgender athletes from its women’s sports teams is raising questions about whether other schools might do the same faced with the weight of the federal government.
Penn, President Trump’s alma mater, is the first to sign such an agreement, which the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) proposed following an investigation that found the university violated Title IX, the federal law against sex discrimination in schools, when it allowed Lia Thomas to join the women’s swim team for the 2021-22 season.
Thomas broke three of the six Penn women’s swimming and diving individual freestyle records that year, which the university removed from its leaderboard as part of its agreement with the Trump administration. An addendum to Penn’s women’s swimming all-time school records now reads, “Competing under eligibility rules in effect at the time, Lia Thomas set program records in the 100, 200 and 500 freestyle during the 2021-22 season.”
Penn’s agreement with the OCR also required it to issue a public statement, to be displayed “in a prominent location on its main website,” pledging compliance with Title IX, which the administration has said prohibits transgender girls from girls’ sports, and specifying that it would not allow transgender women to participate in women’s sports or enter women’s athletic facilities, such as locker rooms.
The Ivy League institution was also made to personally apologize to Thomas’s former teammates and adopt “biology-based” definitions of the terms “male” and “female,” consistent with two executive orders Trump signed during his first weeks in office — one that proclaims the U.S. recognizes only two unchangeable sexes, and another stating the federal government opposes trans athletes’ participation in girls’ and women’s sports.
The NCAA, which oversees sports at more than 1,000 colleges and universities nationwide, barred transgender women from participating in women’s college sports shortly after Trump signed the order on trans athletes. The organization’s president, Charlie Baker, had testified before a Senate panel in December that fewer than 10 known NCAA athletes are transgender.
“There is nothing legitimate about what the Trump administration is doing here in targeting trans-inclusive sports policies,” said Shiwali Patel, director of safe and inclusive schools at the National Women’s Law Center.
“I don’t think we should be giving any sort of legitimacy — I don’t think institutions should, by signing these resolution agreements,” Patel said.
In a letter addressed to the Penn community on Tuesday, J. Larry Jameson, the university’s president, wrote that the school’s commitment to fostering a welcoming environment for its students is “unwavering,” but that it is also bound by federal requirements, including executive orders and NCAA eligibility rules.
“This is a complex issue, and I am pleased that we were able to reach a resolution through the standard OCR process for concluding Title IX investigations,” he wrote.
Jameson added that Penn has never had a transgender student-athlete policy of its own and was in compliance with federal law and NCAA rules when Thomas was a student. But refusing to sign the Trump administration’s agreement “could have had significant and lasting implications for the University of Pennsylvania,” he wrote.
The administration had suspended $175 million in federal contracts awarded to Penn in March, citing Thomas’s participation on the women’s swim team three years ago. That money was released to the university after it signed the agreement,a White House official told The Hill.
Patel said she worries Penn, by signing the agreement, is setting a precedent for other schools to follow, despite having what she said is “a clear legal claim” to challenge the administration if it were to pull a college or university’s funding over its trans athletes.
“I’m worried that other schools might follow, but I hope they push back,” she said. “If they don’t challenge it, then I think that this is going to make the Trump administration think, ‘Well, this is a winnable approach, you know, let’s keep at it and be more aggressive.’ I worry that they’ll continue on this.”
Since Trump’s return to office in January, the Education Department has opened more than two dozen investigations into states, school districts and athletic associations that it says are violating Title IX by allowing transgender students to compete. In April, the department joined forces with the Department of Justice to establish a Title IX “special investigations team” in response to what either agency described as a “staggering volume” of new complaints.
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has also initiated Title IX investigations related to transgender athletes under the second Trump administration, one of which found the state of Maine in violation of the federal civil rights law. That investigation was later referred to the Justice Department, which filed a civil lawsuit against the state’s Education Department in April.
The Justice Department is also investigating California, whose funding Trump threatened in May over a transgender 16-year-old’s participation in a state track-and-field championship.
While several universities have also seen their federal funding threatened or frozen by the Trump administration, Penn is so far the only school to have its funding paused over its handling of transgender athletes.
On separate issues, schools have challenged the administration: Harvard University and the Trump administration continue to lock horns in an escalating battle that began in April, when the White House froze more than $2.2 billion in federal grants to Harvard over the school’s refusal to implement policies that it claims exceed the government’s lawful authority and violate its constitutional rights.
Penn’s agreement with the administration on Tuesday signals that other schools may not have the desire, or the resources, to enter costly and high-profile litigation with the government. They may also lack the appetite to go to bat for transgender students at the risk of losing hundreds of millions in federal financial assistance.
“No school wants to lose their federal funding, so I do think that we’re going to see schools probably adopt more restrictive eligibility policies around transgender athlete participation, particularly in states that already have laws that exclude trans athlete participation,” said Leah Reynolds, principle consultant at Distinct Consulting Solutions, which advises schools on Title IX compliance.
Twenty-seven Republican-led states since 2020 have adopted laws that bar trans students from competing in line with their gender identity, according to the Movement Advancement Project, which tracks LGBTQ laws.
Court orders are blocking six of them, in Arizona, Idaho, Utah and West Virginia, from taking effect, and a narrow ruling in New Hampshire allows only the two students challenging the law to continue competing on their schools’ girls’ sports teams. A federal judge allowed the two high school students to expand their legal challenge to include the Trump administration in February.
“Right now, if you’re following the industry, you can see there’s a clear divide,” said Reynolds. “Some schools, like schools in California or Maine, appear to be resistant to federal pressure to restrict trans athletes. There’s probably going to be a divide until some of the court cases that are happening right now start resolving themselves.”
On Thursday, the Supreme Court agreed to weigh during its next term whether state laws banning transgender athletes from girls’ and women’s school sports teams violate Title IX and the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause. The court’s conservative majority ruled last month that a Tennessee law banning gender-affirming care for minors does not violate the U.S. Constitution or discriminate based on sex or transgender status.