{"id":9532,"date":"2024-03-15T01:30:35","date_gmt":"2024-03-15T02:30:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/?p=9532"},"modified":"2024-03-15T02:57:21","modified_gmt":"2024-03-15T02:57:21","slug":"former-n-c-state-swimmer-alons-kentuckys-riley-gaines-14-others-sue-ncaa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/?p=9532","title":{"rendered":"Former N.C. State swimmer Alons, Kentucky\u2019s Riley Gaines, 14 Others Sue NCAA"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post originally appeared at https:\/\/www.wisconsinrightnow.com\/former-n-c-state-swimmer-alons-kentuckys-gaines-14-others-sue-ncaa\/<\/a><\/p>\n

\"NCAA<\/p>\n

A swimmer who competed at N.C. State is among 16 collegiate athletes, including 12-time All-American Riley Gaines, suing the NCAA for letting men who say they are women compete against them and use the same locker rooms.<\/p>\n

Kylee Alons, a two-time national champion and 31-time All-American for the Wolfpack, in the summer of 2023 told her story of being forced to share a locker room and \u201ccompete against a male athlete\u201d at the NCAA championships. In a social media post last September, she wrote, \u201cI\u2019ll be the first to admit that speaking up about this issue is hard, but it is essential to protect women\u2019s privacy, safety, and integrity of competition.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gaines, who competed at Kentucky, and Pennsylvania swimmer Paula Scanlan have led the effort nationally to save women\u2019s sports. Gaines was at the North Carolina General Assembly last summer as lawmakers passed Fairness in Women\u2019s Sports Act<\/a>, legislation initially vetoed by Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper but later put into law by a veto override.<\/p>\n

The litigation, a 156-page filing on Thursday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, Atlanta Division, says the NCAA and event host Georgia Tech knew they were in violation of Title IX<\/a>. That\u2019s the 1972 landmark statute guaranteeing equal opportunities for men and women in programs and activities that receive federal financial assistance.<\/p>\n

The suit includes four unnamed athletes, two who competed in Division I swimming, the others in Division II volleyball and Division III track. Also in the suit with Alons and Gaines are Olympian swimmer Reka Gyorgy of Virginia Tech; Kentucky swimmer Kaitlynn Wheeler and tennis schoolmate Ellie Eades; soccer and track athlete Ainsley Erzen of Arkansas; and six swimmers from Virginia\u2019s Division III Roanoke College \u2013 Lily Mullens, Kate Pearson, Susanna Price, Carter Satterfield, Katie Blakenship and Julianna Morrow.<\/p>\n

Alons is from Raleigh, Satterfield from Cary and Morrow from Mooresville.<\/p>\n

Bill Bock, who resigned from the NCAA Committee on Infractions last month, is lead attorney in the class-action suit. He\u2019s a former U.S. Anti-Doping Agency general counsel. The Independent Council on Women\u2019s Sports, commonly known as ICONS, is providing funding.<\/p>\n

In a release, ICONS co-founder Marshi Smith said, \u201cThis lawsuit against the NCAA isn\u2019t just about competition; it\u2019s a fight for the very essence of women\u2019s sports. We\u2019re standing up for justice and the rights of female athletes to compete on a level playing field. It\u2019s about preserving the legacy of Title IX and ensuring that the future of women\u2019s sports is as bright as its past.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re sending a clear message,\u201d said ICONS co-founder Kim Jones. \u201cThe integrity of women\u2019s sports is nonnegotiable.\u201d<\/p>\n

Alons gave insight to what happened at the 2022 NCAA championships in an interview with Outkick, and later met with U.S. Rep. Greg Steube, R-Fla. Lia Thomas, previously a swimmer for the Penn men\u2019s team three years, was using the same locker room as the women and Alons opted to change in a storage closet instead of the same locker room with Thomas.<\/p>\n

Her Wolfpack teammates did likewise.<\/p>\n

Alons, in the release, said she doesn\u2019t want another woman to be exposed to the same situation she faced.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe NCAA has put women in an impossible situation both in competition and in the locker room,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

In a U.S. Senate hearing in June, Gaines at one point countered Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., saying, \u201cSenator Durbin, in your opening statement you had mentioned this rhetoric, you mentioned \u2018what message does it send to trans individuals?\u2019 and my combat to that is what message does it send to women, to young girls who are denied these opportunities? So easily their rights to privacy and safety thrown out the window to protect a small population, to protect one group as long as they\u2019re happy. What about us? That is the overall consensus of how we all felt inside that locker room.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This post originally appeared at https:\/\/www.wisconsinrightnow.com\/former-n-c-state-swimmer-alons-kentuckys-gaines-14-others-sue-ncaa\/ A swimmer who competed at N.C. State is among…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":5191,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9532","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-wi-right-now"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9532","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9532"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9532\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9534,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9532\/revisions\/9534"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5191"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9532"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9532"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9532"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}