March 19 (UPI) — The University of Pennsylvania’s policy allowing biological males to compete in women’s sports caused the Trump administration to withhold $175 million in funding for the Ivy League school.
“The Trump administration has ‘paused $175 million in federal funding from the University of Pennsylvania’ over its policy forcing women to compete with men in sports,” Trump administration officials said in a post on its “Rapid Response” X account.
“Promises made, promises kept,” the post concluded.
The $175 million represents nearly a fifth of the $1 billion in federal funding received by the university last year.
Penn officials said they haven’t received a formal notice of the funding pause.
“Penn has always followed NCAA and Ivy League policies regarding student participation on athletic teams,” university officials told NBC News.
“We have been in the past and remain today in full compliance with the regulations that apply not only to Penn but all of our NCAA and Ivy League peers.”
The university in 2022 allowed Lia Thomas, a biological male who identifies as female, to compete on the university women’s swimming team.
Thomas won a national title, which prompted outrage from those opposed to allowing those who identify as female to compete in women’s sports.
Thomas’s national title win prompted the Trump administration to pause the $175 million in federal funds from the Department of Defense and Department of Health and Human Services, and Trump administration official told the New York Post.
“U-Penn infamously permitted a male to compete on its women’s swimming team, overturning multiple records hard-earned by women and granting the fully intact male access to the locker room,” the official said.
Three former members of the Penn women’s swim team accuse Penn, Harvard University, the Ivy League and the NCAA of Title IX violations in a federal lawsuit filed on Feb. 4.
Officials at the University of Maine recently informed the Trump administration that it is complying with Title IX and does not allow biological males to compete in women’s sports regardless of their gender identities.
“U-Maine’s decision to side with sanity is a win for women and girls in Maine,” U.S. Department of Agriculture officials said Wednesday in an online news release.
The USDA recently undertook a Title IX compliance review regarding federal funding at the university and others to ensure women and girls receive equal opportunities to “compete in safe and fair sports, as articulated in President Donald J. Trump‘s Executive Order,” the news release says.
Trump on Feb. 5 signed an executive order called the “No Men In Women’s Sports Executive Order” that bans biological males from competing in women’s sports regardless of gender identity.
“From now on, women’s sports will be only for women,” Trump said during a signing ceremony at the White House.
He was surrounded by girls and women while signing the executive order and afterward told them, “Now, you’re going to go out and win those events.”
A day later, the NCAA’s board of governors revised the association’s sports participation policies to ban biological males from completing in NCAA-sanctioned women’s college sports.
The revised policy only allows women who were born female to compete in women’s sports.