Former Virginia Tech All-American swimmer Reka Gyorgy recently joined a group of former and current college women's athletes who are suing the NCAA over their transgender policies, along with Georgia Tech who hosted the 2022 NCAA Swimming Championships.
Gyorgy is part of a group of 16 athletes suing the NCAA under the umbrella of the Independent Council on Women's Sports, with prominent women's sports activist and former Kentucky All-American swimmer Riley Gaines.
The suit is being made primarily on Title IX grounds stating that the NCAA knowingly violated Title IX and failed to grant female athletes equal opportunity in their competitions including at the 2022 NCAA Championships. It is important to note that the IOC and FINA, the international competitive Swimming body, only allow athletes to compete in the classification based on their biological gender.
Additionally, the lawsuit is suing on the grounds of the 14th Amendment stating that the allowance of transgender swimmers in the NCAA competition was "destroying female safe spaces in women’s locker rooms" as stated in an exclusive by The Free Press. The destruction of locker room is due to the obvious reality that this rule allowed a male to expose their genitalia within a women's locker room.
These are two of the more notable points brought up in this lawsuit with The Free Press having the in-depth story on this lawsuit.
During that infamous 2022 NCAA Swimming Championships, Gyorgy placed 17th in the qualifying round for the 500-yard freestyle that Penn swimmer Thomas would go on to win, costing Gyorgy her Honorable Mention All-American honor in that discipline after earning that honor the year prior. Following that event, Gyorgy released a letter stating her disapproval of the NCAA's allowance of non-biological females to take part in female competition.
Gyorgy told The Free Press that she never heard from anyone at the NCAA after that, while she also received death threats in the aftermath of that letter. Given that lack of response, Gyorgy feels she has no other option but to go to court in pursuit of getting the NCAA rules in line with the more common sense rules of the IOC and FINA.
