A Biden-appointed federal judge dismissed Riley Gaines’ Title IX lawsuit against the NCAA on Monday, holding the association is not covered by the law, a setback she and other female athletes vow to appeal.
U.S. District Judge Tiffany R. Johnson, nominated by former President Joe Biden in 2024, granted the NCAA’s motion for summary judgment in the Northern District of Georgia and wiped out the remaining Title IX claims brought by Gaines and more than a dozen current and former female college athletes.
Fox News reported that Johnson concluded there was no evidence the NCAA received, or could have received, federal financial assistance, the legal prerequisite for Title IX liability. The ruling did not decide whether the NCAA’s former transgender-athlete policy amounted to sex discrimination. It stopped the case on the funding question alone.
Gaines, the former University of Kentucky swimmer who has become a leading voice for women’s sports, said the fight is not over. Independent Council on Women’s Sports co-founders backed an immediate appeal to the 11th Circuit. Plaintiffs have 30 days to file notice.
The lawsuit, filed in March 2024, accused the NCAA of violating Title IX by allowing biological males to compete in women’s events and use women’s locker rooms. The flashpoint remains the 2022 NCAA Division I Women’s Swimming and Diving Championships at Georgia Tech’s McAuley Aquatic Center in Atlanta, where Lia Thomas of the University of Pennsylvania became the first openly transgender athlete to win an NCAA Division I title and tied Gaines for fifth in the 200-yard freestyle final.
Gaines has said female swimmers were required to share a locker room with Thomas during those championships. That experience sits at the center of a broader fight over fairness and privacy that has already spilled into statehouses, Congress, and arenas far beyond campus pools, including pro-women’s-sports apparel disputes at a WNBA game in Georgia.
Johnson’s order turned on a narrow but decisive question: whether the NCAA itself is a recipient of federal funds. Under the Supreme Court’s 1999 framework in NCAA v. Smith, collecting dues from member schools that receive federal money is not enough to pull the association under Title IX.
The court had earlier authorized limited discovery into the NCAA’s relationship with the Defense Department over concussion research. Johnson found the NCAA and the department kept separate funding streams. Both contributed money tied to research at Indiana University, the order said, but the department’s money went to the university and other research participants, not to the NCAA.
She rejected arguments that the NCAA indirectly received federal funding, controlled entities that did, or became a funding recipient through reimbursements for certain employee travel expenses. In the judge’s words:
U.S. District Judge Tiffany R. Johnson wrote in the order:
"Here, there is no evidence that the NCAA ever received, or could have received, federal funds,"
And:
"Thus, Plaintiffs’ Title IX claims cannot proceed."
Earlier in the case, Johnson dismissed the athletes’ constitutional and bodily-privacy claims and claims against the University System of Georgia, Georgia Tech, and other state defendants. In September 2025 she had allowed the Title IX claims against the NCAA to survive temporarily. Monday’s summary judgment ended them.
Gaines answered the dismissal with a clear promise to keep going.
Riley Gaines said:
"This momentary setback will not deter me or other women athletes in the least,"
She added:
"Rest assured, we will be appealing this decision. We are on the side of truth. I am confident Americans will rally to our side to fight the NCAA."
ICONS co-founder Kim Jones said the group believes Johnson erred and expects the appeals court to find the NCAA is covered by Title IX. Jones listed athletes the organization will back on appeal, including Brooke Slusser, Kylee Alons, Reka Gyorgy, Kaitlynn Wheeler, Grace Countie, Ainsley Erzen, and Lily Mullens, women who, she said, depended on the NCAA to protect equal opportunity and were let down.
Kim Jones said:
"We will not give up our fight for women and girls’ rights in sports,"
Marshi Smith, also an ICONS co-founder, went further. She argued the NCAA’s refusal to accept responsibility for women’s rights means it cannot be trusted to regulate men’s or women’s sports, and should not receive broad new powers from Congress.
Marshi Smith said:
"The NCAA’s refusal to recognize its responsibility to uphold women’s rights means the NCAA cannot be trusted to regulate anyone’s sports, men’s or women’s,"
She also said:
"The NCAA cannot be trusted to receive broad new powers that it will only use to inflict further harm upon women,"
The NCAA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The eligibility rules that sparked the suit are no longer in force. In February 2025, following an executive order from President Donald Trump, the NCAA changed its rules to prohibit athletes assigned male at birth from competing on women’s teams. Those athletes may still practice with women’s teams and receive certain practice-related benefits.
That change closed the competitive door the plaintiffs challenged. It did not resolve their claim that the association should answer under Title IX for the years the prior policy was in place, or for the locker-room and fairness harms they described. The same national clash over biological males in girls’ and women’s sports has produced open defiance elsewhere, including California’s refusal to reverse course after a Supreme Court ruling.
Johnson’s decision leaves the athletes to argue on appeal that the funding analysis was wrong. It also leaves a practical gap: if the body that sets the rules for more than 1,100 member colleges and universities is not bound by Title IX, female athletes must look to schools, states, Congress, or future court rulings for protection.
Monday brought a second development that ICONS immediately tied to the ruling. The Senate passed the Protect College Sports Act by a 77-22 vote and sent it to the House. Sens. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., led the bipartisan proposal.
The bill would set national rules on athlete compensation, transfers, and eligibility while giving the NCAA, conferences, and schools certain antitrust protections. Smith urged members of Congress to oppose it, arguing lawmakers should not hand the association more authority after it maintained it was not covered by Title IX.
That legislative push lands in a Capitol already marked by sharp divides over women’s sports, including moments when Senate Democrats walked away from a hearing and left female witnesses without questions. Female athletes watching both tracks, the courtroom and the Senate floor, now see a regulator claiming it sits outside Title IX while seeking broader statutory shelter.
Gaines has kept the issue in front of the country. A photo caption from the source coverage places her outside the U.S. Supreme Court on Jan. 13, 2026, during arguments on state bans on transgender athletes in women’s sports. The political theater around women’s leagues has produced its own distractions, from meandering pep talks to WNBA teams to other high-profile appearances that critics say sidestep the core fairness question.
The order is clear on one point and silent on another. It holds that these plaintiffs cannot pursue Title IX claims against the NCAA because the association was not shown to be a federal-funding recipient. It does not bless the old eligibility policy. It does not find that biological males in women’s categories raise no fairness or privacy problems. It simply closes the Title IX door against the NCAA on the present record.
For Gaines, Slusser, Alons, Gyorgy, Wheeler, Countie, Mullens, Erzen, and the other women who sued, the next step is the 11th Circuit. They argue the side of sex-based categories, locked locker rooms, and equal athletic opportunity. The NCAA, governing more than 1,100 schools, has so far declined public comment on the latest order while its competitive rules have already moved under presidential pressure.
Taxpayers fund the universities. Parents drive the carpools. Female athletes train for years for a fair shot at a roster spot, a final, or a scholarship. When the national body writing the rules says Title IX does not reach it, those athletes are left to keep fighting in court and in Congress for the basic promise of a women’s category that means women.
Women’s sports only stay women’s sports when the people in charge answer for the rules they draft, and this fight is far from finished.
