Long-distance runner Evie Parts has sued the NCAA and Swarthmore College as well as members of its athletic department, saying they illegally removed her from the track team because she is transgender.
Parts’ lawsuit said the NCAA’s ban on transgender athletes in women’s sports did not have legal grounds because it’s not a governmental organization and therefore does not have jurisdiction over Pennsylvania state law or the Title IX federal statute.
She was removed from the team on 6 February, the day the NCAA, US college sports’ largest governing body, issued its new policy on transgender athletes.
Swarthmore men’s and women’s track coach Peter Carroll, athletic director Brad Koch and athletics officials Christina Epps-Chiazor and Valerie Gomez also were named in the lawsuit. According to the complaint, they sent Parts into “such a depressive state that she engaged in self-harm and in one moment told a friend that she wanted to kill herself.”
Susie Cirilli, an attorney who represents Parts, added: “We stand by the allegations in the complaint. As stated in the complaint, the NCAA is a private organization that issued a bigoted policy. Swarthmore College chose to follow that policy and disregard federal and state law.”
Swarthmore issued a statement that it “deeply values our transgender community members.”
“We recognize that this is an especially difficult and painful time for members of the transgender community, including student-athletes,” the school said. “We worked to support Evie Parts in a time of rapidly evolving guidance, while balancing the ability for other members of the women’s track team to compete in NCAA events. Given the pending litigation, we will not comment any further.”
The NCAA chose not to comment.
The NCAA changed its participation policy for transgender athletes to limit competition in women’s sports to athletes assigned female at birth. That change came a day after Donald Trump signed an executive order intended to ban transgender athletes from girls’ and women’s sports.
Pennsylvania’s state Senate approved a bill by a 32-18 margin on 6 May to ban transgender athletes from competing in women’s and girls’ sports at the collegiate and K-12 levels. The state’s Democratic-controlled House of Representatives isn’t expected to vote on the bill.
Parts joined the Swarthmore track team in fall 2020 before then taking off the following four winter and spring seasons. She went back to the team in 2023 to compete in the indoor and outdoor track seasons and in cross country.
When the NCAA issued its ban, the lawsuit states, Parts was told by Epps-Chiazor and Gomez that she could compete with the men’s team or as an unattached athlete. She would only receive medical treatment, the complaint says, if she competed on the men’s team.
According to the lawsuit, Carroll and his staff were not allowed to coach Parts, she could not travel with the team, was not allowed to receive per diem or food and had to pay her way into meets. Parts also couldn’t wear a Swarthmore uniform.
Swarthmore “fully reinstated” Parts on 11 April, the lawsuit says, and she competed on the women’s team until graduating in May.
In July, a transgender woman sued Princeton University claiming she was illegally removed shortly before her race in a school-hosted track meet in May due to her gender identity. Sadie Schreiner, who had transitioned during high school, had previously run for Division III Rochester Institute of Technology but was set to compete as an athlete unattached to any school or club in the Larry Ellis Invitational. That complaint seeks unspecified damages for a “humiliating, dehumanizing and dignity-stripping ordeal” in front of family and friends.
