Swimming against the current

When swimming against men for the University of Pennsylvania, Lia (formerly Will) Thomas more than held his own against the rest of the Ivy League: As a sophomore in 2018-19, for instance, he placed second in the 500-, 1,000-, and 1,650-yard freestyle races at the league championship meet.

Now that Thomas is competing against women, the transgender athlete has been downright dominant—and plenty of people, including roughly a third of Thomas’ own teammates, are irate about it.

Thomas’ success has already spurred changes in not just his sport, but college athletics in general: In response to the outcry about Thomas having an unfair biological advantage, the NCAA revised its transgender policy in January to let individual sports’ governing bodies determine the terms under which transgender athletes may participate. USA Swimming likewise revised its policy soon thereafter, adopting a rule that could prevent Thomas from competing at the NCAA championships in March.

Should Thomas qualify for the NCAA meet, pro-LGBT lawyers will undoubtedly seek injunctive relief allowing him to participate, as this is his final season of collegiate eligibility. However, with the 50th anniversary of Title IX’s passage approaching later this year, Thomas’ case demonstrates why states are finding it necessary to enact laws aimed at furthering the federal statute’s goal of ensuring equal opportunities for women in interscholastic athletics.

“It’s demoralizing for women to have to be on the sidelines watching males take their spots in the field,” said Christiana Holcomb, an attorney for the Alliance Defending Freedom, which is representing female athletes from Connecticut, Idaho, and West Virginia in federal cases concerning the right of women to compete in sex-segregated sports. “Every biological male who takes a spot on a women’s team is taking away a spot from a deserving female.”

Lia Thomas during-warm up laps before a meet with Harvard on Jan. 22, 2022. Josh Reynolds/AP

Thomas first made national headlines in December when he smashed two national records at a meet in Akron, Ohio: He won the 500 freestyle with a time of 4 minutes, 34.06 seconds, beating his nearest competitor by 14 seconds. Thomas also won the 200 free with a time of 1:41.93, touching the wall seven seconds ahead of his closest competitor in that race.

It was in a race in which Thomas did not set a national record, however, that the disparity between himself and his female competitors became truly apparent: Thomas defeated Penn teammate Anna Sofia Kalandaze by a whopping 38 seconds in the 1,650 freestyle.

Since then, seemingly a week hasn’t gone by without Thomas generating buzz in a college sport that typically doesn’t garner much local, let alone national, attention: Sixteen of Thomas’ teammates at Penn have taken a public stand against Thomas, asserting that he should not be allowed to compete. Accusations that Thomas calls himself “the Jackie Robinson of trans sports” and has shown little to no concern about biological female athletes’ feelings haven’t swung public sympathy in his favor.

Olympic gold medalists Michael Phelps and Caitlyn (née Bruce) Jenner have also weighed in, asserting that the need for fairness in women’s sports should trump concerns about exclusion. Jenner, who won the decathlon in men’s track and field at the 1976 Summer Olympics and is himself transgender, even expressed sympathy for Thomas’ teammates at Penn.

“They have to be so woke and say, ‘Oh, this is great,’ while deep down inside they’re saying, ‘This is wrong,’” Jenner told Fox News.

Thomas also made headlines in January when he lost two freestyle races to another Ivy League swimmer, Iszac Henig of Yale. Like Thomas, Henig is transgender; unlike Thomas, she is biologically female but identifies as male.

While Henig has undergone a mastectomy, she has not received hormone therapy because she wants to continue competing as a female. Taking testosterone would disqualify her from doing so under NCAA rules.

At least one of Thomas’ teammates has accused him—anonymously—of conspiring with Henig to throw the 100- and 400-meter freestyle races at the Yale-Penn meet to create the illusion that being biologically male doesn’t give Thomas an unfair advantage.

Under USA Swimming’s current transgender policy, a biological male can only compete as a female if the athlete can present evidence that his “prior physical development … as a male, as mitigated by any medical intervention, does not give the athlete a competitive advantage over the athlete’s cisgender female counterparts.” If the NCAA follows this policy, Thomas will be unable to compete for a national title in any of his events.

Thomas’ teammates have asked their university and the Ivy League not to fight the new policy. As is happening with alarming frequency in women’s sports, however, the cries of actual female athletes are likely to go unheard.