A day after President Trump ordered federal agencies to coordinate in an effort to keep transgender women and girls from competing in women’s sports, the Education Department followed up on Thursday by wading into several of the most publicized and politically charged cases involving transgender athletes.
The department announced that it would investigate the University of Pennsylvania and San Jose State University for violations of civil rights laws after both schools were caught up in controversies about transgender students competing on women’s teams in recent years.
The investigations, which carry the threat of penalties including the withdrawal of federal funding, made it clear that the department was swiftly assuming a central role in ushering in the social changes Mr. Trump campaigned on, including a focus on transgender Americans.
“The previous administration trampled the rights of American women and girls — and ignored the indignities to which they were subjected in bathrooms and locker rooms — to promote a radical transgender ideology,” Craig Trainor, the department’s acting assistant secretary for civil rights, said in a statement. “That regime ended on Jan. 20, 2025.”
The department said it would investigate San Jose State University over a controversy that crested last year, when five women’s volleyball teams forfeited matches against the school because a transgender woman played for San Jose. Before last year, that player had been on the team for three seasons without complaints, until national attention inspired rivals to boycott matches.
Another investigation announced on Thursday was aimed at the University of Pennsylvania, where Lia Thomas, a collegiate swimmer, switched to the school’s women’s team after undergoing a medical transition involving testosterone blockers and estrogen. Calls erupted in 2022 for Ms. Thomas to be barred from competition against other women’s teams, especially after she won an N.C.A.A. championship.
The Education Department said it was also looking into the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association over an incident last year in which a high school in Lowell forfeited a basketball match after several players were injured. The department blamed the injuries on a transgender player.
Critics of Mr. Trump’s order on Wednesday reiterated that transgender athletes make up only a trivial fraction of participants in collegiate sports. Out of 510,000 athletes competing at the collegiate level, there are fewer than 10 who publicly identify as transgender, Charlie Baker, the N.C.A.A. president, said in January.
On Thursday, the N.C.A.A. said that only athletes who were assigned female at birth will be eligible to play women’s sports, after previously giving each sport’s national governing body the power to set policy on transgender participation.
The investigations announced on Thursday appeared to confirm fears among activists and civil rights groups focused on transgender students that the Trump administration is training its focus on a small handful of cases that have been spotlighted by conservative media as foreshadowing seismic shifts in scholastic sports.
The Education Department’s office for civil rights is tasked with enforcing Title IX, the 1972 law prohibiting sex discrimination in educational programs that receive federal funding. Mr. Trump’s order relied on the law, which has been subject to varying interpretations by different administrations, to underpin its stance on transgender students.
But in an internal meeting between Mr. Trump’s appointees and the department’s Office of Civil Rights on Tuesday, Mr. Trainor told the staff that carries out civil rights investigations that they would largely be expected to focus on antisemitism cases, according to a recording of the meeting obtained by The Times.
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