Riley Gaines // Gage Skidmore // Creative Commons
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A United States District Judge for the Northern District of Georgia has dealt a major blow to Riley Gaines’ efforts to further shake down the NCAA for not discriminating against transgender women hard enough. This time, she and her cadre of conservative extremist lawyers were using concussion research dollars to enable anti-trans attacks. Her team said it would file an appeal.
However, like many of the GOP’s attacks on civil rights, it was not based in fact.
The lawsuit rested on the false premise that the NCAA received federal dollars. “Here, there is no evidence that the NCAA ever received, or could have received, federal funds,” Biden appointee Judge Tiffany R. Johnson wrote. “Thus, Plaintiffs’ Title IX claims cannot proceed.”
Riley Gaines is the far-right golden child of the movement to marginalize trans people, especially trans women, by pushing them out of educational and social environments like school sports.
Gaines’ attorneys argued her civil rights were violated because she competed against Lia Thomas, a transgender athlete, in 2022. The two women tied for fifth place. She’s been a highly compensated anti-trans activist ever since.
The Trump regime has been active in using Title IX’s protections for women to exclude women who are transgender. It argues it has the legal authority to reinterpret the decades-old statute to fit its political agenda. In this case, the Gaines attorneys argued—falsely, it seems—that the NCAA, which oversees elite college athletics, receives federal funds. This is due to a collaboration between the NCAA and the Department of Defense to study concussions through the Concussion Assessment, Research and Education (CARE) Consortium.
But Johnson pointed out that affiliation is not the same as being a direct recipient of funds. She included a helpful chart in court filings to explain to Gaines attorneys how government funding works.
“As this language suggests, this arrangement with the NCAA was not merely a matter of private contract—Congress expressly legislated for this kind of agreement and prohibited federal funds from flowing to a non-federal entity,” Johnson further wrote.
“The NCAA was not the ultimate recipient of federal funds; the CARE studies were.”
This comes the same week that the Trump regime formally repealed a Biden-era rule which had protected trans students under Title IX, although this move was largely symbolic, as the rule had already been interpreted and enforced in an anti-trans manner under the Trump regime.
On Twitter, Gaines reacted to the defeat with a troubling vow.
“Of course, we will appeal,” she said. “The goal from the beginning was to get this case before the Supreme Court.”
The full ruling is attached below.
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