A federal judge in Georgia dismissed Riley Gaines’ Title IX lawsuit against the NCAA on Monday after finding no evidence the governing body received federal financial assistance. Gaines and more than a dozen other female athletes plan 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 on the remaining Title IX claims in the Northern District of Georgia. The ruling turned on a threshold question under Title IX, the federal law that bars sex discrimination by education programs that take federal money, rather than on whether the NCAA’s former transgender-athlete policy treated women unfairly.
Fox News Digital reported that Johnson concluded the plaintiffs failed to show the NCAA qualifies as a recipient of federal funds. Without that status, Title IX does not reach the association. Plaintiffs have 30 days to file a notice of appeal with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit.
Gaines, a former University of Kentucky swimmer and conservative activist, framed the loss as temporary.
"This momentary setback will not deter me or other women athletes in the least,"
She added a direct vow to keep fighting.
"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."
Gaines and more than a dozen current and former female college athletes filed the suit in March 2024. They alleged the NCAA violated Title IX by policies that let biological males compete in women’s events and use women’s locker rooms. Named plaintiffs include Kylee Alons, Reka Gyorgy, Kaitlynn Wheeler, Grace Countie, Brooke Slusser, Lily Mullens, and Ainsley Erzen.
The dispute centered heavily on the 2022 NCAA Division I Women’s Swimming and Diving Championships at Georgia Tech’s McAuley Aquatic Center in Atlanta. Lia Thomas, a former University of Pennsylvania swimmer described as the first openly transgender athlete to win an NCAA Division I championship, competed there. Gaines tied Thomas for fifth in the 200-yard freestyle final on March 18, 2022. Gaines has said she and other female swimmers were required to share a locker room with Thomas.
Johnson had already narrowed the case. She previously dismissed the plaintiffs’ constitutional and bodily-privacy claims, along with claims against the University System of Georgia, Georgia Tech, and other state defendants. In September 2025 she allowed the Title IX claims against the NCAA to survive temporarily and authorized limited discovery on the NCAA’s relationship with the Defense Department.
That discovery became the decisive fight. Plaintiffs tried to prove the NCAA received federal money through research ties. Johnson rejected those theories.
In the order granting summary judgment, Johnson found the NCAA and the Defense Department kept separate funding streams for research. Both contributed money connected to Indiana University, but the department’s money went to the university and other research participants rather than to the NCAA.
The judge rejected arguments that the NCAA indirectly received federal funding, controlled entities that took the money, or became a federal-funding recipient through reimbursements for certain employee travel expenses. She anchored the analysis in the Supreme Court’s 1999 decision in NCAA v. Smith, which held that the NCAA is not subjected to Title IX merely because it collects dues from member schools that receive federal funds.
Johnson’s operative language was blunt.
"Here, there is no evidence that the NCAA ever received, or could have received, federal funds,"
She closed the door on the statutory claim in the next line.
"Thus, Plaintiffs’ Title IX claims cannot proceed."
The ruling did not decide whether the NCAA’s former transgender-athlete policy amounted to sex discrimination. It stopped at the funding prerequisite. The NCAA no longer uses the eligibility policy the athletes challenged. 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-associated benefits.
The NCAA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Independent Council on Women’s Sports, known as ICONS, said it will support the appeal. Co-founder Kim Jones said the group believes Johnson erred and predicted the appeals court would conclude the NCAA is covered by Title IX. Jones noted the NCAA governs more than 1,100 member colleges and universities.
"We will not give up our fight for women and girls’ rights in sports,"
Jones said ICONS will stand with the named athletes who, in her words, depended on the NCAA to protect equal opportunities and were let down.
"ICONS will support an appeal by Riley Gaines, Brooke Slusser, Kylee Alons, Reka Gyorgy, Kaitlynn Wheeler, Grace Countie, Ainsley Erzen, Lily Mullens and the many other young women who depended on the NCAA to protect their equal opportunities but were let down by the NCAA."
Co-founder Marshi Smith tied the court loss to a parallel fight on Capitol Hill. On the same Monday as the dismissal, the Senate passed the Protect College Sports Act by a 77-22 vote and sent it to the House. Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Maria Cantwell of Washington led the bipartisan proposal. The bill, backed by the NCAA, would set national rules on athlete compensation, transfers, and eligibility and would give the association certain antitrust protections.
Smith urged members of Congress to oppose the measure. She argued that an organization that successfully claimed it sits outside Title IX should not receive broader regulatory power.
"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 pressed the point further on institutional trust.
"The NCAA cannot be trusted to receive broad new powers that it will only use to inflict further harm upon women,"
Summary judgment ends a case before trial when the court finds no genuine dispute of material fact and the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. Here, after limited discovery, Johnson held the record could not establish the NCAA as a Title IX funding recipient. That finding blocks the statutory claims in her court.
The plaintiffs’ next step is procedural and time-limited. They must file a notice of appeal with the 11th Circuit within 30 days if they want higher-court review of the funding ruling and the path that led to it. An appeals court can affirm, reverse, or send the case back. It does not retry the facts from scratch. It reviews whether the district court applied the law correctly to the record built below.
Investigators and litigants in related disputes will still need to determine how far private athletic associations can set sex-based eligibility rules when they deny federal-funding status, and how courts apply NCAA v. Smith to modern research partnerships and reimbursement practices. Authorities have not publicly framed this order as a final word on fairness in women’s categories. It is a ruling on who Title IX binds.
Gaines has remained visible while the litigation moved. A photo caption places her outside the U.S. Supreme Court on January 13, 2026, as justices heard arguments in challenges to state bans on transgender athletes in women’s sports. That scene is separate from the Georgia docket, but it shows the same conflict playing out across courts and branches of government.
For the athletes who sued, the practical result is clear. Their Title IX claims against the NCAA cannot proceed in the district court on the present record. Claims against the Georgia state defendants are already gone. The association that runs championships for more than a thousand schools avoided a merits trial on whether its former policy discriminated on the basis of sex.
For Congress, the timing collides with a bill that would expand the NCAA’s national role. Smith’s response treats the funding victory as a warning label: if the NCAA can regulate women’s sports while standing outside Title IX, lawmakers should not hand it new authority. Cruz and Cantwell’s measure still must clear the House. No public House outcome appears in the available record.
For the NCAA, the courtroom win preserves the Smith framework for now. The February 2025 policy shift already changed who may compete on women’s teams. The lawsuit targeted the earlier regime and the locker-room conditions athletes described from 2022. Johnson never reached those substance questions once the funding element failed.
Gaines and ICONS say the fight moves to Atlanta’s appeals court. The district judge’s order supplies the map: no evidence of federal funds received or receivable, therefore no Title IX claim. Whether the 11th Circuit reads the discovery record and the Smith precedent the same way will decide if these athletes get another shot at holding the NCAA to the statute that reshaped women’s college sports.
When a national sports body spends years writing the rules for women’s championships, then tells a federal court it never took the federal money that triggers equal-treatment law, athletes and lawmakers both have a right to demand a straight answer about who protects the category and who answers for it.
