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Riley Gaines at the 10X Ladies Conference in Aventura, Florida, August 2025
The judge allowed part of the case to proceed.
A federal judge has dismissed much of Riley Gaines’s lawsuit against the NCAA but left a central claim under Title IX standing, ensuring the fight over transgender athletes in college sports continues. Gaines has made a name for herself as an anti-trans activist after she tied for fifth place with swimmer Lia Thomas in a 2022 competition.
The ruling comes just months after the University of Pennsylvania announced it would revise its swimming records and apologize to women athletes as part of a civil-rights settlement tied to Thomas’s participation.
Northern District of Georgia U.S. District Judge Tiffany R. Johnson, a Biden appointee, ruled Thursday that Gaines and her co-plaintiffs cannot pursue constitutional claims because the NCAA is not a state actor. Citing the 1988 case NCAA v. Tarkanian, she rejected the notion that the association’s eligibility policies become government action simply because public universities enforce them.
Related: UPenn caves to Trump and bans trans women athletes, stripping Lia Thomas of titles
Johnson also dismissed claims against Georgia Tech and the University System of Georgia, calling them moot after lawmakers passed the “Riley Gaines Act,” which bars public institutions from hosting competitions where transgender women compete against cisgender women. Republicans passed that law earlier this year. However, Johnson allowed Gaines’s Title IX claim to proceed, finding that athletes had plausibly alleged the NCAA could be bound by federal law through its multimillion-dollar concussion-research partnership with the Department of Defense.
In late July, the University of Pennsylvania agreed to a civil-rights settlement with the Department of Education that stripped Thomas of records and reassigned them to cisgender swimmers. The university apologized to athletes “disadvantaged” by its adherence to NCAA rules at the time and pledged to adopt biology-based definitions of sex going forward. Education Secretary Linda McMahon hailed the move as restoring Title IX’s “proper application.”
Related: Trump’s Department of Education wants NCAA to strip awards, records from trans student-athletes
The lawsuit, filed in March 2024, argued the NCAA had “radically departed from Title IX’s original meaning” by permitting Thomas to compete at the 2022 championships. Plaintiffs said the policy deprived cisgender athletes of fair competition and privacy, and sought damages, policy changes, and even reassignment of awards.
The NCAA, which in February adopted a blanket ban on transgender women in women’s sports following President Donald Trump’s executive order redefining sex under federal policy, has until October 9 to respond. Limited discovery will continue into early January to determine whether the NCAA qualifies as a federal funding recipient.
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