William Thomas swam on the men’s team at the University of Pennsylvania. In 2018-2019, he came second in the men’s 500, 1,000, and 1,650-yard freestyle at the Ivy League championships. He was ranked 554 in the 200 freestyle, 65 in the 500 freestyle, and 32 in the 1650 freestyle.

Thomas started the transition in May 2019. She officially started using her new name, Lia Catherine Thomas on New Year’s Day in 2020. She became the first openly transgender athlete to win an NCAA Division I national championship in any sport by winning the women’s 500-yard freestyle.  While at the University of Pennsylvania, the biological male identifying as a female (Lia Thomas) had been allowed to participate on the school’s female swimming team and to use female locker rooms and showers, despite retaining his male anatomy. Among other things, allowing this male to access intimate female spaces is causing angst among the female swimmers on the team. 

There are other instances where biological male athletes have competed against women. The boxing championships at the 2024 summer Olympics saw two transgender boxers, Algeria’s Imane Khelif and Chinese Taipei’s Lin Yu-ting compete and medals in the women’s championships. Khelif beat Italy’s Angela Carini so mercilessly and so quickly that Carini retired from the fight in less than a minute.

In an effort to prevent males from participating in girls’ sports and protect girls access to athletic scholarships the House passed bill H.R.28 to “generally prohibits school athletic programs from allowing individuals whose biological sex at birth was male to participate in programs that are for women or girls”. The bill passed the house this past January 14th with 218 for and 206 against. Congressman Pat Ryan voted NAE. Also voting not to protect girls’ sports were the 96 members of the house Democratic Women’s Caucus. The mission statement of this caucus states it is “dedicated to the advancement of full equal rights, economic opportunity, improved health and safety, and elimination of laws and policies with discriminatory or disparate impacts for women and girls, and works to achieve these goals through legislation, advocacy, and educational efforts.”  So why did they all vote against the bill to protect girls’ sports?

The Senate version to protect girls’ sports, S.9, failed to advance on March 3rd when ALL democrats, including Schumer and Gillibrand voted to block the bill.  

According to a recent New York Times poll 79% of Americans support “that boys and men, regardless of how they identify themselves, should not be allowed into women’s sports.”  Why are our Democrat elected officials not supporting this legislation?