EXCLUSIVE: President Donald Trump’s Division of Training (DOE) launched an investigation into potential Title IX violations that occurred at a number of academic establishments, hours after he signed an government order to ban trans athletes from ladies’s sports activities.
The Division’s Workplace of Civil Rights (OCR) might be investigating San Jose State College, the College of Pennsylvania and the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Affiliation (MIAA) for separate incidents involving trans athletes competing on a ladies’s or women’ sports activities staff.
“Pursuant to President Trump’s Maintaining Males Out of Girls’s Sports activities Govt Order yesterday, the U.S. Division of Training right this moment introduced investigations into two academic establishments and an athletic affiliation the place violations of Title IX have been reported,” learn a press release from the DOE supplied solely to Fox Information Digital.
“President Trump’s Govt Order ‘Maintaining Males Out of Girls’s Sports activities’ is a promise to ladies and women: this administration is not going to tolerate the mistreatment of feminine athletes.”
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President Donald Trump indicators the No Males in Girls’s Sports activities Govt Order into regulation within the East Room of the White Home in Washington, D.C., on Feb. 5, 2025. (ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS / AFP)
The incidents at San Jose State and UPenn turned widely-publicized controversies that resulted in a number of lawsuits.
At UPenn, transgender swimmer Lia Thomas was allowed to compete on the ladies’s swim staff after beforehand competing on the college’s males’s staff. Thomas went on to interrupt a number of ladies’s data, successful a number of occasions on the 2022 Ivy League championships and NCAA championships.
Former UPenn swimmer Paula Scanlan, who needed to share a locker room with Thomas, supplied a press release to Fox Information Digital thanking the DOE for its forthcoming investigation.
“I’m deeply grateful to the Division of Training for addressing Title IX violations regarding feminine athletes with such seriousness. As a former College of Pennsylvania swimmer who was compelled to compete towards and share a locker room with a male athlete, I look ahead to them holding accountable the upper training establishments that promoted this,” Scanlan stated.
A lawsuit filed by three different former UPenn ladies’s swimmers alleges the college directors and ladies’s swimming coach Mike Schnur misled the gamers about whether or not Thomas can be sharing a locker room with them. The three ladies additionally allege the college pushed pro-trans ideology onto them throughout the technique of accepting Thomas on the staff, and so they have been led to really feel their considerations over being teammates with a organic male was rooted in a “psychological downside.”
“The UPenn directors informed the ladies that if anybody was combating accepting Thomas’s participation on the UPenn Girls’s staff, they need to search counseling and help from CAPS and the LBGTQ middle,” the lawsuit alleges.
“The directors additionally invited the ladies to a chat titled, ‘Trans 101.’ Thus, the ladies have been led to grasp that UPenn’s place was that if a girl on the staff had any downside with a trans-identifying male being on her staff that lady had a psychological downside and wanted counseling.”
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Former College of Kentucky swimmer and present conservative activist Riley Gaines has additionally filed a lawsuit towards the NCAA for its present gender identification polices over her expertise competing alongside Thomas on the 2022 NCAA championships. A number of different ladies impacted by trans inclusion have joined Gaines’ lawsuit.
Fox Information Digital has reached out to UPenn for remark.
At San Jose State, transgender volleyball participant Blaire Fleming performed three seasons on the ladies’s staff from 2022-24, as one of many Mountain West’s prime hitters, main the staff in kills. Nonetheless, in contrast to UPenn’s dealing with of Thomas, SJSU directors allegedly withheld the reality about Fleming’s delivery intercourse from the opposite feminine gamers on the staff, in response to a lawsuit filed by 11 Mountain West volleyball gamers and a former SJSU assistant coach.
Former Spartans co-captain Brooke Slusser leads that lawsuit and can also be a plaintiff in Gaines’ lawsuit towards the NCAA. Slusser alleges San Jose State directors and volleyball coach Todd Kress actively prevented her from figuring out Fleming’s delivery intercourse whereas assigning her to share bedrooms with the trans athlete on most street journeys throughout their first season collectively in 2023.
Slusser’s lawsuit towards the Mountain West additionally alleges that Fleming conspired with an opponent on one other staff to have Slusser spiked within the face throughout a match on Oct. 3.
The controversy involving Fleming prompted 5 of SJSU’s opponents in 2024 to forfeit a complete of eight matches. The ultimate forfeit was the Mountain West Event semifinal towards Boise State, who had already forfeited twice to the Spartans within the common season.
That forfeit despatched Fleming, Slusser and SJSU to the convention remaining, the place they misplaced to Colorado State. The plaintiffs in Slusser’s lawsuit filed an emergency injunction in November previous to the event in an try and have Fleming faraway from competitors and all losses by forfeit wiped from their opponents’ data. Nonetheless, federal Decide Kato Crews, who was appointed by then-President Joe Biden in January 2024, dominated to permit Fleming to play.
Fox Information Digital has reached out to San Jose State for remark.
The state of affairs involving the MIAA occurred in February 2024, when a trans athlete for the KIPP Academy Lynn lady’s basketball staff brought on accidents to feminine gamers for Collegiate Constitution Faculty of Lowell. Collegiate Constitution needed to forfeit the sport at halftime for the sake of the well-being of its gamers.
The MIAA’s handbook states {that a} “pupil shall not be excluded from participation on a gender-specific sports activities staff that’s in step with the coed’s bona fide gender identification.”
Fox Information Digital has reached out to the MIAA and Kipp Academy for remark.
Now, all three of these establishments face an investigation by Trump’s DOE.
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President Donald Trump’s Division of Training launched an investigation into potential Title IX violations that occurred at a number of academic establishments, hours after he signed an government order to ban trans athletes from ladies’s sports activities. (Getty Photographs)
Moreover, the OCR might be actively reviewing athletic participation insurance policies at quite a few colleges to guage their alignment with Title IX protections for feminine athletes, sources informed Fox Information Digital.
Final week, the DOE notified Ok-12 colleges and better training establishments of a return to imposing Title IX protections on the premise of organic intercourse.
The NCAA has already recommended it is going to capitulate to Trump’s order.
NCAA President Charlie Baker responded to the manager order in a press release, saying it supplied a “clear, nationwide normal,” and the NCAA Board of Governors would overview it and take steps to align the group’s coverage within the coming days.
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