It’s been two years since Lia Thomas made history, or disgrace, depending on your point of view.
A group of 16 former and current student athletes decided to sue the NCAA next Friday. The lawsuit calls for a complete ban on transgender girls in all sports, citing opportunities “lost” and “taken” and how transgender athletes “displaced” cisgender athletes “unfairly.”
Additionally, it calls for a board that is dear to one of the suit’s leaders, former All-American and anti-trans activist Riley Gaines, a member of the University of Kentucky.
The lawsuit requires “the NCAA to create, legislate, and transfer and update all awards, records, points, prizes, titles, trophies, announcements, or other recognition assigned, given, announced, or recognized by the NCAA which were based in any way upon the athletic results or participation of any male who competed in women’s events.”
This lawsuit and petition are a result of a two-year NCAA championship race between Thomas and Gaines.
Gaines tied with Thomas for fifth place in the 200-yard freestyle. Given that the NCAA only allowed one trophy per place on site, Gaines’ reaction to having to wait a few weeks for her trophy is to use it to snag a personal pound of flesh.
Never mind the personal attacks on Thomas she makes in every conversation as a spokesperson for the traditional anti-trans lobbies that are sponsoring this lawsuit.
True to form, this lawsuit is built on the pro-trans panic that suggested that Thomas, or 2019 NCAA Division II 400-meter hurdles champion CeCé Telfer, were men rising to kill women’s sports.
We’ve seen this panic flare up lately. Consider the Independent Council on Women’s Sports, the lawsuit’s primary partner, for whom there has always been disrespect and stigmatization.
Three highly successful high school trans girls and collegiate track athlete Sadie Schreiner of NCAA Division III Rochester Institute of Technology (N.Y.) who was competing at the NCAA DIII nationals in 200 m.
Even though each was fully eligible to compete by the rules of the respective governing bodies of their event, all of these student athletes were referred to as “men” and “cheaters.”
The lawsuit doesn’t surprise Ursinus College professor, sports historian, and host of the End of Sport podcast Johanna Mellis.
Mellis, a former Division I conference champion sprinter at the College of Charleston, described the lawsuit as “a political project from start to finish that does the opposite of what it and its plaintiffs claim it does” to Outsports.
She even noted that of the 16 scholar-athletes who are part of the lawsuit, 12 of them are from swimming.
Mellis described her own career and the issue she claims the plaintiffs’ lawsuit isn’t discussing in an op-ed published by The Guardian last year that she was critical of’s role in the heightened transphobia of the moment.
“They claim that they are protecting children’s rights in sport,” Mellis said. “But nowhere in the lawsuit — or in any of their advocacy work — are they critiquing the people in sport who largely discriminate against women and other minoritized groups physically, psychologically, sexually, and economically: the mostly cisgender, heterosexual, white men in charge of opportunities in the NCAA, athletic departments, and the International Olympic Committee.
I’m still disgusted that cishet white women in my community are desperately trying to harm trans women. In the locker room or swimming pool, trans female athletes have never harmed me or sexually harassed me. It was always white men who were cishet.
This issue does not exist in a vacuum. The groups pushing this lawsuit and this hysteria have used sport in general, and Thomas, in particular, to push anti-trans discrimination laws that now affect more than 30 U.S. states. The recent synthesis of anti-trans law that was passed in Ohio in January is a prime example.
When I consider the high school students who some of these types treat their followers with glee, it is upsetting. Some of these people are certain to be parents as well. What would they think if someone venomously approached their child?
In the middle of a tournament season, the NXT Women’s Golf Pro disqualified Hailey Davidson, partially based on poll results rather than actual competition data.
I think her dismissal is a slap in the face to someone who has put in the effort to accomplish what she was told to do while also working toward a goal. This lawsuit is the latest injustice in a long line against trans people who just want to shut up and play ball, and it’s frustrating.
The focus of the suit is now shifting to how the NCAA reacts. The organization’s president, Charlie Baker, the former Republican governor of Massachusetts who supported and signed trans rights legislation five years ago, has been publicly noncommittal on the NCAA’s phased transgender policy.
When the NCAA cedes the eligibility requirements of its respective national and international governing bodies, the policy will undergo significant change in the coming fall. In swimming and track and field, for example, transgender women are banned from the women’s competition.
Regardless of what the individual sports governing bodies decide, some will have reason to doubt whether the NCAA will stand up and support its upcoming regulations or take the decision to completely ban NCAA sports.
“The lawsuit still provides cover for the NCAA’s misogyny and, of course, transphobia,” Mellis said. The NCAA can and likely will proclaim that it is trying to ‘defend women’s sports,’ and very well may cede ground to the plaintiffs’ cause and entrench the anti-trans discrimination.
I also have those doubts. I’m reminded of a quote from James Baldwin when I consider how the NCAA did not protect or support Thomas against the vitriol received: “I can’t believe what you say because I know what you do.”
Grups with political axes to grind filed this lawsuit. In Gaines, they found someone to sell their hysteria. She handled the situation personally and has treated Thomas badly since they last touched base two years ago.
Thomas is currently in law school and probably hasn’t given the past up much thought, but she still lives rent-free in Gaines and the supporters of this lawsuit.
A question for those who constantly shriek for “fairness”: Is it fair to Lia Thomas that she is still your target?
