Riley Gaines Fights Trans Agenda in Court as 16 Athletes Sue NCAA for Violating Women's Rights
Former collegiate swimmer Riley Gaines has joined forces with 15 other athletes to take the NCAA to court in the ongoing battle between transgender activism and women's rights in sports.
Gaines stated on X, "I'm suing the NCAA along with 15 other collegiate athletes who have lost out on titles, records, & roster spots to men posing as women. The NCAA continues to explicitly violate the federal civil rights law of Title IX. About time someone did something about it."
it's official!
— Riley Gaines (@Riley_Gaines_) March 14, 2024
I'm suing the NCAA along with 15 other collegiate athletes who have lost out on titles, records, & roster spots to men posing as women
The NCAA continues to explicitly violate the federal civil rights law of Title IX. About time someone did something about…
As CBN News reported, Gaines had to share the podium with Lia Thomas, formerly Will Thomas when the trans athlete swam for the University of Pennsylvania. The two tied for fifth place in the NCAA's 2022 women's 200 freestyle.
Thomas later went on to take first place in the women's 500 freestyle, becoming the first trans athlete to win an NCAA national championship.
That moment galvanized Gaines' resolve and launched her into advocacy.
Women's rights activists like Gaines say there are hundreds of female athletes who are suffering from biological men's intrusion into women's sports and are forced to give up their titles, opportunities, and even their privacy.
"Today, the NCAA doesn't care if competitors in women's sports are even women. It's fully willing to allow trans-identifying men to break records in women's sports, along with risking their safety, stealing their trophies, suppressing their athletic achievements, and even taking their scholarships," wrote Doreen Denny, the Senior Director of Government Relations for Concerned Women for America.
***Please sign up for CBN Newsletters and download the CBN News app to ensure you keep receiving the latest news from a distinctly Christian perspective.***
The Independent Council on Women's Sports is spearheading a lawsuit against the NCAA and Georgia Tech accusing them of knowingly violating Title IX when they allowed Thomas to compete, the Free Press reports.
Title IX is a federal statute that was initially created to protect women's rights, prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sex in educational institutions that receive federal funding, serving as the basis for sex-segregated school athletics.
"The NCAA's most basic job is to protect the fairness and safety of competition," Gaines said, "but instead the NCAA has been and continues to openly discriminate against women."
Gaines and the 15 other female athletes have asked to be awarded for damages for "pain and suffering, mental and emotional distress, suffering and anxiety, expense costs and other damages due to defendants' wrongful conduct." They also demand the NCAA rescind trophies given to trans athletes and award them to the female competitors who would have won them otherwise.
The female plaintiffs represent swimming programs at colleges such as NC State Swimming, Roanoke College Women's Swimming, VA Tech Swimming and Diving, and University of KY Swimming and Diving.
Some athletes recounted feeling violated by having to change in the same locker room as Thomas during swimming competitions.
Kylee Alon swam for North Carolina State and told the Free Press she changed in a storage closet to avoid being in the locker room with Thomas.
"I was literally racing U.S. and Olympic gold medalists and I was changing in a storage closet at this elite-level meet," Alon said. "I just felt that my privacy and safety were being violated in the locker room."
Some plaintiffs recounted the upsetting experience of being subjected to seeing Thomas' male genitalia.
Meanwhile, the lawsuit rejects the NCAA's attempt to create fairness in the sport by requiring biological males to take "one year of testosterone suppression treatment."
NCAA President Charlie Baker recently admitted in a letter to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee that, "The NCAA has never studied the harm of its policy allowing males identifying as women to participate and compete on women's teams."
"That's a bombshell," Doreen Denny expressed. "The NCAA's 'Transgender Student-Athlete Participation Policy' which sent male Lia Thomas into the women's locker room and continues to promote males for national titles in women's sports has never been researched for its (now evident) harm to female athletes."
