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Margherita Guzzi Vincenti became the first known Team USA Olympic athlete to sue a U.S. sports governing body in opposition of its policies allowing transgender athletes to participate in women’s sports when she filed a class-action lawsuit against USA Fencing on Wednesday.
Vincenti’s lawsuit came the same month that a trans athlete, Dina Yukich, sued USA Fencing for being excluded from a women’s competition.
The organization is facing legal battles on both fronts in what has been a transformative year for gender policies in American sports after President Donald Trump signed the “Keeping Men’s Out of Women’s Sports” executive order in February, which prompted the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee (USOPC) to change its own athlete safety policy to comply the order in July.
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Alicja Klasik of Team Poland and Margherita Guzzi Vincenti of Team United States compete during the Women’s Epee Team Table of 8 match between Team Poland and Team United States on day four of the Olympic Games Paris 2024 at Grand Palaison July 30, 2024, in Nanterre, France. (Andrzej Iwanczuk/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
But Vincenti is bringing her lawsuit forward based on a situation that occurred in January at the North America Cup in Missouri. She alleges USA Fencing knowingly permitted biological males to compete in women’s divisions while advertising events as female-only, including in competitions involving athletes under the age of 18, while withholding that information from the female competitors.
“We discovered that transgenders are present at our events, and this is not putting females at an equal playing field,” she told Fox News Digital. “USA Fencing does not disclose the exact amount of transgenders in our sports. So we’re really left in the dark. We don’t know, when we step on the strip, who we are going to fence. So it could be a fencer named Mary Wilson, and then we just discover at the very moment, when you step on the strip and you’re about to start your match, that Mary Wilson is not a woman.”
Vincenti said she herself didn’t compete against a trans fencer at the event in January, but she did have to face one at a previous North America Cup.
“I just had to move forward, but this is not about me, how I feel about the one match or multiple matches that I might have fenced with transgenders. My voice is here to take a stand to protect the next generation,” she said.
In April, women’s fencer Stephanie Turner went viral for kneeling to protest a trans opponent at an event in Maryland. She received a black card and disqualification as punishment. Vincenti says this same dilemma is regularly faced by other women’s fencers whenever they get matched up against a trans athlete.
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“Do I withdraw from the competition, do I refuse to fence, and therefore I am faced with a black card, elimination from competition? So, as you can see, USA Fencing puts us women in an impossible position of no win,” Vincenti said. “It’s been an ongoing thing, so we’ve kind of known this has been an ongoing pattern of having competitions always open for transgenders. The problem is we don’t really know how many, or when they are showing up, and it only takes one match to make it unfair.”
The 35-year-old Olympian has been fencing since the age of seven, and represented the Italian Junior National Team from 2005-09, before becoming an American 15 years ago.
And through her decades of competition, she has competed against men multiple times. She has no problem competing in co-ed matches against male competitors, but for her, it’s a completely different game that she needs to be prepared for.
“As long as you don’t go into a competition without knowing that you might fence with a male… those are totally fine… but what I don’t believe is correct is to be forced to do that while you are unaware that you are doing that,” she said.
“When I compete against a female vs. a male, there is a difference in strategy and there is a difference in physicality, obviously. With a male being stronger, the match has to be much [more] physical. While, when you fence a female, the match is more technical, more tactical, it’s all about trying to trick your opponent. It’s a completely different game.”
Data shows most Americans oppose trans athletes in women’s and girls’ sports, and that trend appears to be global as well.
At the USOPC media summit this week, USOPC Board Chair Gene Sykes called Trump’s executive order to prevent transgender athletes from competing in women’s sports “consistent with international trend.”
“And fortunately, the executive order that is designed to protect women’s sports in the United States is very consistent with the trend internationally,” Sykes said. “The expectation is that this is, this is where world sport, international sport, will go.”
Still, Vincenti is familiar with the opposition to this stance, and she respects the other side. Still, she believes their argument is too rooted in “emotion.”
“People get very emotional about this topic. While, in my opinion, we should take a step back and really look at it more from a scientific perspective and really see what is the core problem here. We’re not trying to exclude transgenders… it’s something that people really take it to heart and I think many times people forget to look at the bigger picture,” she said.
Vincenti even has her own message for trans athletes who want to compete with women.
“My message is, we need to work together. We don’t want to be a disrupted family. We are all in this, male, female, transgender, there’s no labeling here, there’s just fairness, that’s our game, we want honesty, and we want fairness,” she said.
“If we all decide to put aside our political views, our emotions, and we all just work together, we can all find the right space to have everybody thrive.”
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Margherita Guzzi Vincenti poses for a portrait during team USA Fencing media day at New York Athletic Club on May 21, 2024, in New York City. (Al Bello/Getty Images)
USA Fencing has provided a statement to Fox News Digital responding to the lawsuit.
“USA Fencing is aware of the class‑action complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri on Oct. 29, and we strongly dispute its allegations. We will address this matter through the legal process and have no further comment at this time,” the statement read.
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