Lia Thomas Sues to Overturn World Aquatics’ Transgender Ban

metroweekly.com:

The Telegraph, Thomas — the former University of Pennsylvania swimmer who won the 500-yard freestyle race in the 2022 NCAA Division I Swimming and Diving Championships — has petitioned the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) in Switzerland to overturn rules prohibiting transgender athletes from competing in world championship events, and at the Olympics, based on their gender identity.Thomas’s victory in the 500-yard freestyle sparked a backlash against transgender athletes in the United States, prompting FINA, the predecessor to World Aquatics, to adopt rules prohibiting transgender females from competing in women’s events if they have undergone “male puberty.”Only those athletes who have never developed secondary sex characteristics, or those who started puberty blockers prior to age 12, are exempt from the ban.World Aquatics has justified the restrictions on transgender participation, saying it based its recommendations on a scientific policy document that concluded that transgender women swimmers retain significant physical advantages over cisgender women, including increased muscle mass and lung size, even when they suppress their testosterone levels.

Along with its adoption of the transgender athlete ban, World Aquatics sought to create an “open” category that would be open to individuals, regardless of gender, in which transgender athletes could compete.The category’s first races were scheduled to be held at the World Cup in Berlin last October.

But when the World Cup came around, the events had to be canceled due to lack of interest. Nonetheless, World Aquatics said that its working group on transgender athletes would continue to stand by the ban and look for other ways to allow transgender swimmers to participate.“Even if there is no current demand at the elite level, the working group is planning to look at the possibility of including open category races at masters events in the future,” it said in a statement following the cancellations.Critics of the.