Riley Gaines said the dismissal of her lawsuit against the NCAA could move the legal battle closer to what she hopes is its ultimate destination: the U.S. Supreme Court.
Gaines, joined by Independent Council on Women’s Sports co-founders Kim Jones and Marshi Smith, told Fox News Digital in an exclusive group interview that the plaintiffs will appeal after a federal judge granted summary judgment to the NCAA on their remaining Title IX claims.
“No instance of defeat or what is perceived or deemed as defeat feels good,” Gaines said. “There [were] feelings of frustration, obviously, with the basis of what the grounds for dismissal was, indicating that the NCAA was not subject to Title IX.”
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Former competitive swimmer Riley Gaines speaks at a news conference following the House vote on H.R. 28, the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act, at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 14, 2025. The House passed the legislation 218 to 206 to prohibit federal funding for K-12 schools that include transgender students on women’s sports teams. (Getty Images)
Smith said the first reaction among the other women involved in the lawsuit was “shock,” particularly because the NCAA has frequently celebrated Title IX and its role in the growth of women’s college sports.
“The year that Riley was confronting this at the swim championships in 2022, it was the 50th-year anniversary of Title IX,” Smith said. “The number of Title IX parties that the NCAA and each individual university threw for themselves, celebrating themselves for the success and triumph of Title IX.”
Smith said the plaintiffs were stunned to see the NCAA successfully argue that it was not covered by the law it had publicly celebrated.
“To watch Riley compete against a 6-foot-4 male athlete that same year and have the NCAA celebrate him and his success in women’s sports, fast-forwarding to now, their complete denial of having any responsibility to Title IX — it’s mind-blowing,” Smith said.
Jones described the other athletes as “bewildered” and “shell-shocked” by the outcome.
“This is an institution that we, as female athletes, have always believed had our backs, were bound by federal law [and] could not violate the rights of female athletes across the country,” Jones said. “Even when I was going through school, the NCAA helped schools to ensure compliance to Title IX.”
Jones argued that the NCAA’s structure makes the ruling especially difficult for the plaintiffs to accept. The organization is governed by representatives of its member institutions, many of which receive federal funding and are independently subject to Title IX.
“The NCAA is the controlling authority for collegiate athletics. They set nationwide policy. And the NCAA is composed of the schools,” Jones said. “Their board of directors is presidents of universities.”
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However, Gaines said the athletes became more optimistic after considering the path ahead.
“Ultimately, this is something that I think myself and the dozens of other plaintiffs involved in the lawsuit would like to see before the Supreme Court,” Gaines said. “That way it can be established, the law of the land once and for all, when it comes to female athletes and how large institutions like the NCAA are able to harm us with, at this point, little to zero accountability.”
U.S. District Judge Tiffany R. Johnson ruled Monday that the evidence did not establish the NCAA as a recipient of federal financial assistance through its concussion-research collaboration with the Department of Defense. Because receiving federal assistance is required for liability under Title IX, Johnson entered judgment for the NCAA and closed the case.
The Biden-appointed judge did not determine whether the NCAA’s former transgender-athlete policy constituted sex discrimination.
The lawsuit was filed in 2024 by Gaines and more than a dozen other current and former female college athletes. It challenged NCAA policies that permitted biological males who met certain eligibility requirements to compete in women’s events.
The case focused heavily on the 2022 NCAA Division I Women’s Swimming and Diving Championships, where Gaines tied former University of Pennsylvania swimmer Lia Thomas for fifth place in the 200-yard freestyle. Thomas won the 500-yard freestyle national championship and used a women’s locker room during the event.
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That championship coincided with the 50th anniversary of Title IX, a detail Gaines and Smith said made the NCAA’s successful legal position particularly jarring.
“At that national championship, the NCAA was handing out shirts that said, you know, ‘50 years of Title IX creating opportunities for women,’” Gaines said. “The irony at the time, of course, being that they were making us compete against a 6-foot-4 man. But now here we are in this position, understanding that the NCAA is arguing that they’re not subject to Title IX.”
Smith called the contrast “mind-blowing.”
“The number of Title IX parties that the NCAA and each individual university threw for themselves, celebrating themselves for the success and triumph of Title IX,” Smith said. “Fast-forwarding to now, their complete denial of having any responsibility to Title IX — it’s mind-blowing.”
The NCAA responded to the dismissal by defending its current record on women’s athletics.
“The NCAA is proud to continually invest in and expand women’s sports and the NCAA is in full compliance with the Trump administration’s executive order on women’s sports,” the organization said in a statement to Fox News Digital.
Gaines dismissed the response as “total hogwash” and accused the organization of invoking women’s sports only when convenient.
“It’s just a way to kind of wink at everyone, act as if they’re doing the right thing, the upstanding thing,” Gaines said. “Again, pretending as if they care about women and their female athletes.”
The NCAA changed its transgender participation policy in February 2025, one day after President Donald Trump signed his “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports” executive order. Its current rules prohibit athletes assigned male at birth from competing on women’s teams or receiving scholarships designated for women.
However, the policy permits those athletes to practice with women’s teams and receive other benefits available to athletes eligible for practice.
Smith argued that the NCAA’s statement did not offer female athletes a durable guarantee independent of the current administration.
“They have made absolutely no guarantees to women,” Smith said. “They have not said, ‘We support female athletes and will not put men into women’s sports again.’”
Jones said the legal fight has left the plaintiffs feeling betrayed by an organization they once believed was responsible for protecting college athletes and promoting Title IX compliance, and hopes to take the lawsuit to the highest court.
“The goal of the young women is to — exactly what Riley said — take this all the way. There’s got to be accountability here.” Jones said.
The plaintiffs have 30 days from the entry of judgment to file their notice of appeal with the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Gaines said she remains confident that the case can eventually reach the nation’s highest court.
“There is light at the end of the tunnel,” she said. “There is some optimism thinking forward about this case.”
The dispute has also become intertwined with the 2026 midterm elections and the broader political fight over transgender participation in women’s sports.
Gaines said she expected Democrats to distance themselves from transgender-athlete policies after Republicans’ success in the 2024 election. Instead, she argued, the party has remained committed to positions she believes contributed to its electoral losses.
“I really was under the impression that we would begin to see Democrats slowly start to recant, or distance themselves from their previous voting records, or statements, or things, that they’ve said when it comes to women’s rights and our safety and privacy and equal opportunities in our sports and beyond,” Gaines said. “But that’s just not at all what they’ve done.”
Gaines cited Democratic proposals to expand the Supreme Court as one political development that could affect the lawsuit if it takes several years to reach the justices.
“Even beyond this issue, that concerns me. Of course it does,” Gaines said. “That’s just one of many things across many different issues that the Democrats have promised to do and have campaigned on doing, which is why I believe there is such an emphasis on this November and what midterms really look like.”
She urged parents to consider issues involving school sports, parental rights, education and student privacy when they vote.
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“If you have daughters, if you have kids, if you’re a parent, and you care about your parental rights and your children and their education and their success and their well-being and their health and their safety and their privacy and their opportunities, that enough should be a motivating factor to get out to the ballot box in November,” Gaines said.
Gaines acknowledged that the debate has become heavily partisan, but said the athletes challenging the NCAA did not originally view the protection of women’s sports as an inherently political cause.
“We don’t view this issue as a political issue,” Gaines said. “We have called on those on the other side of the aisle to link arms, to stand with us, but that just hasn’t been the case.”
She characterized policies allowing biological males to enter women’s sports as a reversal of the progress female athletes secured through Title IX.
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“What’s happening now is taking us back to that time,” Gaines said. “It’s not progressive, it’s regressive.”