Riley Gaines Lawsuit: Why did 16 American female athletes sue the NCAA? Policy violation rule explored

16 female athletes, including Riley Gaines, filed a lawsuit against the National Collegiate Athletics Association (NCAA) on March 14 for allowing transgender athletes to participate in women's sports.

The center of action of the lawsuit is Lia Thomas, a transgender athlete and a student of Pennsylvania who bagged various awards at the 2022 NCAA Championships. The lawsuit, the first of its kind, states that the NCAA has knowingly hurt the sentiments of female athletes and has violated Title IX, which aims to prohibit any sort of "sex-based discrimination."

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Atlanta, aims to put pressure on the NCAA to change the rules regarding the participation of transgender athletes in women's sports, taking back all the past awards won by them and giving those to the women contenders.

"Promoting policies that deprive women of equal opportunities and safe spaces in collegiate sport appears to facilitate the NCAA’s goal of retaining control of the monetisation of college sport," the lawsuit claimed (via The Washington Times).

"Through [its] transgender eligibility policies, the NCAA has aligned with the most radical elements of the so-called diversity, equity and inclusion agenda on college campuses," it read further.

The lawsuit also accused the University System of Georgia and Georgia Tech of violating Title IX by changing the women's locker room at the 2022 swimming finals to "unisex."

"This change was made so that Thomas, a fully grown adult male with full male genitalia, could use the same locker rooms to be used by more than 300 female student-athletes, depriving the female student-athletes of sex-separated women’s locker room facilities and bathroom and restroom facilities," the complaint read.

In an interview with The Free Press, Riley Gaines said:

"The NCAA’s most basic job is to protect the fairness and safety of competition but instead the NCAA has been and continues to openly discriminate against women."

Gaines was stripped of a prize during the NCAA Championships in 2022 when she tied with Lia Thomas for the fifth position.

Riley Gaines slams the government for its gender equality message

Riley Gaines

The 23-year-old Tennessee swimmer recently slammed US Vice President Kamala Harris for her statements regarding equal rights for women.

In an X (formerly Twitter) video, Harris said:

"We must fight for gender equality. The status of women is the status of democracy. Democracy is the strongest when everyone participates. And it is weaker when people are left out. Freedom and democracy can never be taken for granted by any of us."

The statements were not taken wisely by Gaines as she slammed Harris and the government for taking away the rights of women and overlooking the security concerns of women athletes. She re-tweeted the video with the caption:

"Scared of losing the rights we fought so hard to win" this is satire, right? Bc I know you cant possibly be referencing women when you're actively taking away our rights to privacy, safety, and equal opportunity. Sports, prisons, domestic violence shelters, sororities... You're a sell-out."