The Trump administration said it was suspending $175m (£135m) in federal funding to the University of Pennsylvania over the school’s policy regarding transgender athletes.
The move relates to a transgender woman who won the highest US national college swimming title in 2022 while competing for the Ivy League university, which is based in Philadelphia.
A statement from the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn) on Wednesday said it was “aware of media reports suggesting” that the funds have been suspended but that it has “not yet received any official notification or any details”.
It comes as Trump aims to crack down on transgender athletes participating in sports and to cut federal spending.
“UPenn infamously permitted a male to compete on its women’s swimming team, overturning multiple records hard-earned by women, and granting the fully intact male access to the locker room,” an unnamed Trump official said in an email sent to reporters on Wednesday.
The funding was being provided by the US Department of Defense and the Department of Health and Human Services, the official said.
The university said in its statement that it has always followed the rules published by the NCAA, which governs university sports.
Last month, the NCAA changed its policy to say that only “student-athletes assigned female at birth” will be allowed to take part in collegiate competitions.
The policy change came a day after President Donald Trump signed an executive order preventing transgender women from competing in female categories of sports.
The same order guided the federal education department to investigate schools that did not comply and that were possibly in violation of Title IX, the federal law banning sex discrimination in schools.
Soon after, the department announced an investigation into schools, including UPenn “for suspected Title IX violations”. The funding freeze is separate from this investigation, however.
The freeze, which was announced on a White House social media account, comes years after transgender swimmer Lia Thomas, who competed on the UPenn men’s team for three seasons before starting hormone replacement therapy in spring 2019.
Competing on the women’s swim team in 2022, she shattered school swim records, posting the fastest times of any female swimmer. She has since graduated and no longer competes for the university.
Ms Thomas has not commented about the funding cut. She previously has defended transgender women in sports and said it did not “threaten women’s sports as a whole”.
She also has noted the transgender population of college athletes is “very small”. The NCAA has said it amounted to about 10 athletes.
“The biggest misconception, I think, is the reason I transitioned,” Thomas told ABC and ESPN in 2022. “People will say, ‘Oh, she just transitioned so she would have an advantage, so she could win.’ I transitioned to be happy, to be true to myself.”
Last month, three former UPenn swimmers filed a lawsuit seeking to nullify her records.
Trump also made the decision earlier this month to block $400m in federal funding to Columbia University, over claims that it has tolerated antisemitism on campus. The school has been home to Gaza protests over the war between Israel and Hamas.
The White House has also moved to pull funding from the University of Maine after alleging that it violated federal law by permitted transgender students to compete on women’s sports teams.
UPenn receives more than $1bn in federal funding each year, according to the Daily Pennsylvanian student newspaper.
Trump is himself a UPenn alum, having graduated from its Wharton business school in 1968.
