Transgender college athletes fight to regain eligibility for women’s sports

Universities no longer allow biological males to participate in women’s sports, but that doesn’t mean transgender athletes are throwing in the towel.

In the past month, at least three male-born college students prevented from competing against women have filed lawsuits against the NCAA and its small-school counterpart, the National Association of Interscholastic Athletes, as well as three universities.

The athletes include Emma Morquecho, a 33-year-old volleyball player who sued the NAIA, the California Pacific Conference and Westcliff University earlier this month after being declared ineligible for the women’s team and losing an athletic scholarship.

“By taking a stand, I’m not just fighting for myself,” Morquecho said in an Aug. 11 statement. “I’m speaking for every trans person who has been silenced, and I hope my voice empowers others in our community to know their stories and their rights matter.”

Days later, transgender long-distance runner Evelyn “Evie” Parts sued the NCAA and Swarthmore College after being kicked off the women’s track team on Feb. 6, the same day the NCAA reversed course on transgender athletes in female sports.

Philadelphia attorney Susie Cirilli, who represents Parts, told the Associated Press that the “NCAA is a private organization that issued a bigoted policy. Swarthmore College chose to follow that policy and disregard federal and state law.”

Last month, transgender sprinter Sadie Schreiner sued Princeton University and three track officials after being removed from the starting list for the women’s 200-meter run at a track meet in May, about 15 minutes before the race was scheduled to begin.

“The unlawful actions of Princeton University, aided and abetted by the three other defendants, caused Sadie’s relatives and friends who were present at the meet (including Sadie’s mother, step-father, step-sister, and the step-sister’s girlfriend and her sister’s boyfriend) to witness the humiliating, dehumanizing and dignity-stripping ordeal and the effect of the Defendant’s collective unlawful behavior against Sadie,” said the lawsuit filed July 15 in New Jersey Superior Court.

Schreiner does not attend Princeton, but entered the race as an “unattached” athlete. The two-time All-American from the Rochester Institute of Technology was not listed on the university’s spring track roster.

The runner is seeking compensatory and punitive damages as well as a ruling that the university violated New Jersey’s anti-discrimination law.

Biological males found themselves boxed out of women’s collegiate sports after both the NAIA and NCAA reversed their positions on transgender eligibility amid growing pushback over competitive fairness.

The NAIA, the sports governing body for about 250 mostly small colleges, designated women’s sports for “biological females only” effective August 2024.

The NCAA, which sets eligibility rules for its 1,100 member schools, limited the women’s category to “student-athletes assigned female at birth only” hours after President Trump signed his “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports” executive order.

What the lawsuits have in common is that all three were filed in states that boast laws prohibiting discrimination based on gender identity.

Those state laws are also central to the battle between the Trump administration and states such as California and Maine that have refused to bar biological males from high school sports.

The Independent Council on Women’s Sports, or ICONS, said the recent challenges to collegiate eligibility rules come as another indication that “the battle for women’s sports is not over.”

“Across several blue states, we are witnessing an alarming trend: a select group of men using state courts to demand access to women’s sports and scholarships,” said ICONS in a statement to The Washington Times. “Women’s sports exist for women, not to validate male entitlement.”

The complaints filed by Morquecho and Parts also accuse the universities and sports associations of violating Title IX of the 1972 Education Amendments, contending that the federal law banning sex discrimination in education also encompasses gender identity.

That’s an open question that the Supreme Court is expected to take up in its next term as it considers challenges to state laws in Idaho and West Virginia banning biological males from female sports. Both laws have been blocked by lower courts.

The Biden administration approved a rulemaking last year revising Title IX to include gender identity, a regulation that was vacated in January by a federal judge in Kentucky.

The Trump administration holds that Title IX applies only to biological sex, a position backed by Republicans and women’s sports advocates.

“Let’s be clear: federal law protects women on the basis of sex, not a ’gender identity,’” said ICONS. “No state law can override these sex-based protections. These lawsuits are a calculated effort to exploit state courts and dismantle women’s spaces and opportunities. Federal protections for women cannot be sacrificed based on geography.”

Princeton and Westcliff have not commented on the lawsuits, but Swarthmore said in a statement that it “deeply values our transgender community members and the many ways they enrich campus life.”

“We recognize that this is an especially difficult and painful time for members of the transgender community, including student-athletes,” said the college. “We worked to support Evie Parts in a time of rapidly evolving guidance, while balancing the ability for other members of the women’s track team to compete in NCAA events.”

Morquecho was offered a women’s athletic scholarship in July 2023 after making it clear to the coach that “she was a transgender woman,” according to the complaint.

After moving from Phoenix to Orange County, California, however, Morquecho was told that “Westcliff was awaiting an eligibility decision from Cal Pac due to Plaintiff Morquecho being transgender.”

Westcliff declared Morquecho ineligible for the 2023-24 volleyball season in August 2023 and withdrew the scholarship, according to the lawsuit filed Aug. 8 by the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund in California federal court.

“By not letting Emma Morquecho earn a scholarship playing volleyball, Westcliff University, Cal Pac, and the NAIA have bowed to a national movement to ban transgender people from every facet of public life,” said Ernest Herrera, MALDEF Western Regional Counsel. “With this lawsuit, MALDEF seeks to restore an educational opportunity to a proud Latina student-athlete.”