The Virginia Attorney General’s civil rights office recently found Roanoke College violated the Virginia Human Rights Act and Title IX by retaliating against female swimmers who objected to allowing a male swimmer to be on the women’s swim team, and by treating the male swimmer better than the female swimmers.
“This is a victory not just for the women of Roanoke, but for all females in Virginia who deserve fairness, equity, and safety in sex‑segregated athletics. Roanoke College is absolutely wrong to have allowed ‘gender identity’ to override biological truth and reality,” says Beth Parlato of the Independent Women’s Forum.
The College Fix reports that “Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares published his Office of Civil Rights finding Aug. 25 in response to concerns that female athletes raised back in 2023 about a trans-identifying biological male joining the college’s swim team. Miyares determined that the public college violated the state’s Human Rights Act,” which, like Title IX, “prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex.”
Roanoke College retaliated “against female swimmers who publicly criticized the college’s discriminatory policies. All but one swimmer, who had close ties to a professor involved in the program, were denied participation in the college’s term study abroad program.” The attorney general’s finding explains that the college “denied its female swimmers accommodations, advantages, and privileges of the swim program and otherwise discriminated against them on the basis of sex. This finding is based upon the physiological differences between men and women and the unfair advantages post-pubescent levels of testosterone affords males, causing displacement of women on women’s teams by males.”
Moreover, the College denied “female swimmers equal accommodations, resources, and participation on the basis of sex,” in that the ” female swimmers were not provided with mental health resources nor were they offered any opportunity to speak with Roanoke administrators; however, the male swimmer was offered such resources, according to the finding.”
