Controversial transgender swimmer Lia Thomas vows to fight trans athlete bans amid national shift on issue

Former University of Pennsylvania transgender swimmer Lia Thomas precocious spoke up successful enactment of the trans jock assemblage arsenic astir Americans person go opposed to trans inclusion successful women's sports. 

Thomas spoke up astir the contented astatine the HiTOPS trans younker forum connected Saturday.

"I americium going to support warring arsenic overmuch arsenic I americium capable to," Thomas said implicit Zoom. 

"In bid to combat the battles we request to fight, we person to instrumentality unneurotic and enactment each other."

Thomas' caller comments travel 3 years aft the jock was allowed to aquatics successful the women's class for UPenn astatine the 2022 Ivy League championships and NCAA championships. Thomas antecedently competed for the university's men's swimming squad nether the sanction Will Thomas.

But the erstwhile NCAA sex eligibility argumentation allowed trans athletes to vie with and stock locker rooms with women, truthful Thomas took vantage and went connected to interruption aggregate women's records. 

Thomas was adjacent the absorption of mostly-positive attraction from the mainstream bequest media successful 2022, doing sit-down interviews with ESPN, NBC News and "Good Morning America." 

RILEY GAINES WANTS TO SEND A ‘THANK-YOU NOTE' TO LIA THOMAS – HERE'S WHY

Penn's Lia Thomas and Kentucky's Riley Gaines tied for 5th successful the 200 freestyle finals astatine the NCAA championships connected March 18, 2022, successful Atlanta. (Rich von Biberstein/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

But 3 years later, President Donald Trump has ordered a nationalist prohibition connected trans athletes successful women's sports, the NCAA has amended its argumentation to support biologic males from competing connected women's teams, and information suggests the immense bulk of Americans reason trans inclusion successful women's sports. 

But Thomas believes the policies of trans jock inclusion should beryllium near up to the trans athletes themselves. 

"It has to beryllium the athletes deciding for themselves wherever they consciousness astir affirmed and astir comfortable," she said. "Having routes that are harmless and non-discriminatory, that let them entree to that."

Thomas' inclusion connected the women's swimming squad astatine UPenn successful the 2021-22 play has prompted aggregate lawsuits and a intermission successful $175 cardinal successful national backing to the assemblage for Title IX violations. 

Riley Gaines presently leads a suit against the NCAA, alongside respective different women who competed with Thomas successful 2021-22, implicit its erstwhile sex individuality policy. 

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Penn's Lia Thomas aft swimming the 100 freestyle prelims astatine the NCAA Swimming and Diving Championships connected March 19, 2022, successful Atlanta. (Rich von Biberstein/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

In February, 3 of Thomas' erstwhile teammates filed a suit against the university, the Ivy League and the NCAA, seeking to person each of Thomas' records successful the women's class revoked, portion besides alleging the assemblage pushed pro-trans ideology connected the team. 

The 3 erstwhile women's swimmers, Grace Estabrook, Margot Kaczorowski and Ellen Holmquist, assertion that by allowing Thomas to compete, the institutions "injured them and violated national law." 

"The UPenn administrators told the women that if anyone was struggling with accepting Thomas’s information connected the UPenn Women’s team, they should question counseling and enactment from CAPS and the LBGTQ center," the suit alleges. 

"The administrators besides invited the women to a speech titled, ‘Trans 101.’ Thus, the women were led to recognize that UPenn’s presumption was that if a pistillate connected the squad had immoderate occupation with a trans-identifying antheral being connected her team, that pistillate had a intelligence occupation and needed counseling."

Meanwhile, aft the 2022 assemblage season, Thomas made an effort to vie successful the Olympics arsenic a woman, but was denied. World Aquatics amended its argumentation aboriginal that twelvemonth to prohibit immoderate trans jock who went done antheral puberty from competing successful the women's category.

Thomas mislaid a tribunal situation to that regularisation successful 2024. 

"I felt truthful devastated and [felt] grief implicit losing this entree to my sport," Thomas said Saturday. "There was nary uncertainty successful my caput that I was going to combat this, that this is my athletics too, and I'm not conscionable gonna springiness it up." 

A caller New York Times/Ipsos survey recovered the immense bulk of Americans, including a bulk of Democrats, don't deliberation transgender athletes should beryllium permitted to vie successful women's sports. Of the 2,128 radical polled, 79% said biologic males who place arsenic women should not beryllium allowed to enactment successful women's sports. 

Of the 1,025 radical who identified arsenic Democrats oregon leaning Democrat, 67% said transgender athletes should not beryllium allowed to vie with women.

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Lia Thomas competes successful the 200 metre freestyle during an NCAA assemblage conscionable against Harvard University connected Jan. 22, 2022, successful Cambridge, Massachusetts. (AP Photo/Josh Reynolds)

A national exit canvass conducted by the Concerned Women for America legislative enactment committee recovered that 70% of mean voters saw the contented of "Donald Trump’s absorption to transgender boys and men playing girls' and women’s sports and of transgender boys and men utilizing girls' and women’s bathrooms" arsenic important to them. Additionally, 6% said it was the astir important contented of all, portion 44% said it was "very important."

Gaines, who infamously tied Thomas astatine the 2022 NCAA championships, has since go a salient blimpish governmental influencer and believes Thomas' inclusion successful the women's class played heavy into the result of the 2024 election. 

"I deliberation we should nonstop a thank-you enactment to radical similar Will Thomas, I truly do, signed and sealed by me. I volition motion the thank-you note, I volition constitute it, due to the fact that I judge helium handed america the election," Gaines antecedently told Fox News Digital.