Controversial NCAA champion Lia Thomas is challenging World Aquatics’ 2022 ban on transgender women who have gone through any part of the male puberty process, according to The Telegraph.
Thomas reportedly hired Canadian law firm Tyr — no relation to the swimwear company of the same name — to take her case in front of Switzerland’s Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) last September.
Her lawyer, Carlos Sayao, argued that the 2022 rules are “discriminatory” and cause “profound harm to trans women.”
“Lia has now had the door closed to her in terms of her future ability to practice her sport and compete at the highest level,” Sayao said. “She’s bringing the case for herself and other trans women to ensure that any rules for trans women’s participation in sport are fair, appropriate, and grounded in human rights and science.”
World Aquatics lobbied for CAS to throw the case out because Thomas is not a member of USA Swimming, The Telegraph reported.
A couple months after winning the 2022 NCAA title in the 500-yard freestyle, Thomas revealed that it has been a goal of hers for a long time to compete at the Olympics. The next month, World Aquatics (then FINA) voted to prevent transgender women from competing in elite women’s categories, instead creating a separate “open” category. However, that category has been a failure so far because there are not many trans swimmers out at the elite level.
Thomas first started transitioning back in 2019, but World Aquatics cited experts who said that suppressing testosterone was not enough to reverse biological advantages from puberty.
Humans born male and old enough having gone through puberty have an advantage over woman everything else being equal. Does anyone not see that? Trans just needs to be its own category but not enough people in it to create meets for them etc. maybe in due time there will be trans meets.
I 100% support her being able to compete in the sport she loves, she should not be excluded… but she should compete in a combined Men’s/Open division, or as non-scoring/exhibition participant in women’s if it’s important for her to swim against women. She has a clear and unfair advantage in the women’s division and should be ineligible for women’s records or medals/championships. If you disagree on the advantage, how did she go from not even being able to qualify for the NCAA Men’s Championship meet to winning the women’s meet? This is a question of the spirit of sport… Faster, Higher, Stronger – Together, and measuring what the human body is capable of. We split these achievements by male and… Read more »
Didn’t see this one coming. (Eye roll)
Let’s just take away the categories, everyone swims against everyone. Take away the lane lines too and the need to swim a specific stroke and those silly stroke rules. Let’s just let everyone do whatever they want no matter what!
As someone who generally supports trans rights, I find it deeply upsetting that one person’s arrogance, greed and self-centeredness is likely to end up doing incalculable damage for thousands of others. Bringing this case is a horrible decision and, whether the court case technically results in a “win” or not, will be a loss for the trans community.
You can only really come to that conclusion – this is a loss for trans people, whatever happens – if you think the current rules are as fair and just as possible.
This seems like a worthy reason to bring such a case.
(Fwiw, I don’t think the old rules or the new ones were perfect. I dunno if we’ll be able to tell for sure at this point either way.)
I almost wish this stays up, just so people see how bad a lot of the comments that get deleted are.
Good for her. She has put up with a lot of stuff since 2022 NCAAs and remained quiet despite thousands of people making a mockery of her. Regardless of how you feel on the subject the treatment Lia has faced over the past several years has been absolutely abhorrent.
She has made a mockery of the ncaa Athletic system
no US firm would take the case?
I don’t know your experience with lawyers, but there’s always a lawyer who will take the case.
The head of the Tyr law firm is a former swimmer. That’s likely the connection here.
Chuck repped Caster Semenya and has done other CAS cases.