Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Friday slammed transgender swimmer Lia Thomas as a "fraud," calling the University of Pennsylvania athletes' move to the women's team after three years on the men's team "wrong."
"It is wrong to have a swimmer compete for three years on the men's swim team, switch to the women's team and win the women's national championship," DeSantis said during a speech at Liberty University in Virginia. "That is a fraud. That is wrong."
Thomas became a leading symbol of transgender athletes — stirring both opposition and support — when she joined the Penn women's swim team after competing for three years on the men's squad at the Ivy League school.
Last March, Thomas won the women's 500-yard freestyle at the NCAA championships in Atlanta, becoming the first transgender woman to claim a national title in swimming. She has since graduated from Penn and plans to attend law school.
She had plans of pursuing her goal of qualifying for the 2024 U.S. Olympic swimming trials that will determine the team for the Paris Games, though the world's swimming governing body last June effectively banned transgender women from competing in women's events.
FINA members widely adopted a new "gender inclusion policy" that only permits swimmers who transitioned before age 12 to compete in women's events. The organization also proposed an "open competition category."
The organization said it was setting up "a new working group that will spend the next six months looking at the most effective ways to set up this new category."
DeSantis on Friday also slammed doctors who "pump minors with puberty blockers" or perform sex-change operations on them.
"And now in Florida, physicians who do those things will lose their medical license," he added.
Information from the Associated Press was used in this report.
Solange Reyner ✉
Solange Reyner is a writer and editor for Newsmax. She has more than 15 years in the journalism industry reporting and covering news, sports and politics.
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