Complaint seeks to protect girls’ sports

The attorney who filed a U.S. Department of Justice complaint against Delaware’s policy on transgender girls playing on girls’ sports teams says he expects movement on the issue once the department is fully staffed.

“This is an equal protection violation. When you bump a girl off a team, and put a boy on, that’s discrimination, that’s a violation of the 14th Amendment,” said Thomas Neuberger, a Delaware attorney who filed the complaint along with Sen. Bryant Richardson, R-Seaford.

A caveat allows Delaware to either accept a binding agreement to obey President Donald Trump’s executive order to keep men out of women’s sports or lose more than $300 million in federal funding, Neuberger said.

Harmeet Dhillon is awaiting confirmation by the full Senate to become the head of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, Neuberger said, and is a supporter of Trump’s executive order.

“It’s laying on her desk waiting for her to take office,” he said. “We expect one of the first things she will do is jump on the Delaware complaint.”

Neuberger said he represented several women on the University of Pennsylvania swim team when they brought concerns to him over a trans swimmer, Lia Thomas, swimming on the women’s team.

“They were told by their coach, they were told by the school, that your life will be ruined if you speak up,” he said. “You’ll be killed in social media. You’ll never get a job, you’ll never work, your life is over if you stand up for your privacy, your rights, your integrity or anything else like that.”

Videos circulated in 2022 of the 6-foot-1 swimmer handily beating competition in the 500-yard freestyle showed crowds cheering for the second-place finisher.

On Feb. 6, the NCAA Board of Governors adopted policy that limits competition in women’s sports to student-athletes assigned female at birth only.

Neuberger said the Delaware Interscholastic Athletic Association was poised to make a similar policy, but the state Department of Education took away the DIAA’s authority to do so.

The complaint states, “The DIAA policy on transgender student participation in sports allows students to participate in accordance with their gender identity, not biological sex as determined by birth. The policy requires student-athletes to either change their name and legal marker or medically transition before they can play on teams that align with their gender identity.”

DIAA Executive Director David Baylor referred media inquiries to the Delaware Department of Education.

DOE spokeswoman Alison May would not comment on pending legal matters.

“I think the DIAA would have done the right thing,” Neuberger said.

Already, a swimmer similar to Lia Thomas has competed on a girls’ swim team in Delaware and has swum in the state championships.

“My investigation reveals that it’s happening,” Neuberger said.

The complaint also states that a local school determines a student’s sex assignment for athletics.

“The sex assignment determination remains in effect for the duration of the student’s high school eligibility,” the complaint states.

A Cape Henlopen Board of Education policy revised Feb. 27 refers to Title IX that prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in education programs and activities, but does not mention allowing transgender girls to play on girls’ sports teams.