Trump Cut Federal Funding to Penn for Transgender Athlete Policies. Could Harvard Be Next?

After the White House suspended $175 million of the University of Pennsylvania’s federal funding last week over the participation of a transgender athlete on the school’s swim team, the funding cut’s legal basis remains murky — and Harvard could be next on the list.

The Trump administration announced the Penn funding cuts in a post on X last Wednesday, citing the school’s “policies forcing women to compete with men in sports” and the participation of Lia Thomas, a transgender woman, on Penn’s women’s swim team.

Intense public backlash against Thomas — who graduated from Penn in 2022 — made Penn a high-profile target. But Harvard and Penn have long maintained similar policies on transgender athletes’ participation on Division 1 teams.

Robert A. Boland, a sports law professor at Seton Hall Law School and former athletics integrity officer at Pennsylvania State University, said it is “difficult” to assess the rationale for the funding cuts at Penn or pinpoint what policies they are based on, though Thomas’s participation appeared to be “the triggering event.”

Unlike at Penn, no transgender woman athletes have openly competed on Harvard’s D1 teams. But both schools are staring down a lawsuit, which also names the National Collegiate Athletic Association as a defendant, over Thomas’s participation in a tournament hosted on Harvard’s campus in 2022.

Both Harvard and Penn defer to NCAA guidance regulating trans athletes’ participation in competitions.

The cuts at Penn last week are just the latest source of anxiety for Harvard, which has moved to shore up its finances as its access to federal funds becomes increasingly precarious.

Harvard instituted a University-wide hiring freeze earlier this month. And Harvard College Dean Rakesh Khurana told The Crimson on Tuesday that school officials are getting ready for possible federal funding cuts following a $400 million slash to Columbia University’s funding.

A University spokesperson declined to comment for this piece.

Sarah L. Hartley, an attorney and lecturer in sports law at the University of Virginia School of Law, said it’s possible the Trump administration could use the same standards to go after Harvard’s athletic policies — unless the Trump administration decides it’s satisfied with using Penn to send a message.

“Every institution that allowed an athlete to participate who was trans is in a similarly situated position, as is the NCAA,” Hartley said.

After Trump signed an executive order in early February threatening to rescind federal funds from educational institutions that permit transgender female athletes to compete in women’s sports, both Harvard and Penn removed transgender inclusion policies from their athletics department websites.

And NCAA policies have grown more restrictive under the order. One day after it was signed, the NCAA announced that those assigned male at birth could not participate in women’s sports. Men’s sports are open to all regardless of sex assigned at birth.

There is nothing to suggest Penn has allowed transgender athletes to compete out of compliance with NCAA rules or federal law.

At the time Thomas swam in the NCAA Championships in 2022, her participation was compliant with Biden-era policies and the NCAA policies of the time, which allowed transgender women to compete if they had been on testosterone-suppressing drugs for a year.

And Penn has maintained that it has acted “in full compliance” with federal regulations.

Hartley, the University of Virginia lecturer, said of Thomas that “there’s no question that she complied with the NCAA’s rules.”

The White House has not cited a concrete policy violation that prompted its cuts to Penn or what specific funding it is suspending. That could open it up to legal challenges: a similarly abrupt funding cut over Columbia’s handling of pro-Palestine protests prompted a lawsuit alleging violations of the Administrative Procedure Act, which bans federal agencies from taking actions that are arbitrary or instituted without proper legal procedure.

“I think there are a lot of question marks around whether funding freezes based on executive orders that don’t have the full force and effect of statutory law are ever permissible,” Hartley said.

“I think you’ll see in the course of the 130-plus lawsuits that are pending against the current administration, a lot of challenges to the permissibility of what they’re doing,” she added.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

A White House official wrote in a statement to The Daily Pennsylvanian that the administration decided to cut funding because Penn “infamously permitted a male to compete on its women’s swimming team,” but the cuts did not stem from the ongoing Title IX investigation into the university.

The official added that the funding cuts — which affect funding from the Departments of Defense and Health and Human Service — served as “immediate proactive action to review discretionary funding streams” to higher education institutions.

It remains unclear whether the Trump administration will seek to take other universities to task over their policies for transgender athletes, or whether officials will be content with the symbolism of their actions against Penn.

Hartley said that there was “uncertainty” on what the administration’s “next target” would be, but she hoped that Harvard is “not the next in line.”

“I am hopeful that the administration has gotten a pound of flesh by going after Penn,” Hartley said.

Boland, the Seton Hall professor, said he expected the funding cuts to Penn will have “a chilling effect on all higher educational institutions.”

“This is a way to force compliance — and compliance on issues that are particularly important to this administration,” he said.

—Staff writer Annabel M. Yu can be reached at annabel.yu@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @annabelmyu.

—Staff writer Sheerea X. Yu can be reached at sheerea.yu@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @_shuhree_.