American transgender swimmer taking legal action against World Aquatics to compete again: Report

A transgender swimmer from the United States is taking legal action against World Aquatics in a bid to compete again. According to a report by The Telegraph late Thursday (Jan 25), Lia Thomas has not professionally swum since World Aquatics introduced new rules in 2022, which prohibited anyone who underwent any part of male puberty from the female category.

Thomas, 25, gained worldwide prominence by becoming the first transgender athlete to win a National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) college title. Thomas was assigned male at birth and started to question her gender identity towards the end of high school. In 2018, Thomas came out as a transgender and began transitioning a year later using hormone replacement therapy.

First at men's team, then at women's team

Add WION as a Preferred Source

Thomas enrolled at the University of Pennsylvania in 2017 and graduated in 2022. During her time at the university, Thomas began competing in the men's team and then swam in the women's team as her hormone therapy was over.

The report by The Telegraph said that Thomas asked the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) in Switzerland to overturn rules brought in by World Aquatics. In 2022, she became the first openly transgender person to win the NCAA division title- a 500-yard freestyle event in Georgia.

Backlash over Thomas competing in women races

However, her victory sparked a major furore in the US as well as overseas over her taking part in women's races. Thomas had been ranked 65th over the same distance in the division’s male category and this led to protests from rival swimmers.

Riley Gaines, one such rival swimmer, had expressed concerns about Thomas being allowed to use women’s locker rooms during events, thereby exposing other competitors to her “male genitalia”.

Gaines told Fox News last year that she had not been warned beforehand that she and others would be sharing a room with Thomas. "We did not give our consent; they did not ask for our consent. In that locker room, we turned around and there’s a 6ft 4in biological man dropping his pants and watching us undress, and we were exposed to male genitalia," Gaines added.

“Not even probably a year, two years ago, this would have been considered some form of sexual assault, voyeurism. But now, not even are they just allowing it to happen, it’s almost as if these large organisations are encouraging it to happen," she further said.

Three months after her NCAA win, World Aquatics introduced a rule change banning those to have gone through male puberty from women’s races under its jurisdiction and introducing a new ‘open’ category.

Also watch |Russia's Supreme Court bans LGBTQ movement, asks govt to designate gays as extremists

The Telegraph report on Thursday also said that Thomas has hired a top Canadian law firm to fight World Aquatics and be back to swimming.

She first went to the court in Sept last year, when World Aquatics applied to have the case thrown out on the basis that she was not currently impacted by its rules because she had not submitted herself to the jurisdiction of USA Swimming, its recognised member association, the report said.

(With inputs from agencies)