Judge Lets Riley Gaines’ Title IX Case Against NCAA Proceed

OutKick’s Riley Gaines, along with 18 other former and current female college athletes, sued the NCAA in 2024 over policies that allowed biological male athletes to compete in women’s sports. On Thursday, Sept. 25, 2025, a federal judge in Atlanta ruled that the Title IX claims against the NCAA can move forward to the next stage. 

The lawsuit also named Georgia officials and the Georgia Tech Athletic Association, but the court dismissed those defendants, finding the forward-looking claims moot after Georgia passed the Riley Gaines Act, which bars colleges from hosting or participating in events that allow biological males in women’s competitions or facilities. The judge called the law "precisely the kind of government voluntary cessation" that ends such claims against state actors. 

A federal judge ruled Riley Gaines’ Title IX case against the NCAA can proceed, focusing on whether DoD concussion-research ties make the NCAA a federal funding recipient.

(Imagn Images)

The case stems from the 2022 NCAA Women’s Swimming and Diving Championships at Georgia Tech, where biological male Lia (formerly William) Thomas won a national championship. Thomas also used the women’s locker room, showers, and restrooms. Georgia Tech hosted under an NCAA agreement that gave the association operational control of the venue during the meet. 

RELATED: Riley Gaines To Georgia Tech President: 'Why Didn't You Protect Me?'

The NCAA stays in the case, but not on all claims. The court threw out two claims against the association: the Section 1983 state-action theory ("Plaintiffs have failed to plausibly allege the NCAA was a state actor") and a bodily-privacy claim, because the Fourteenth Amendment restrains government entities, not private ones like the NCAA. Those were dismissed with prejudice. 

What survived is the Title IX claim, and it turns on a narrow but critical question: Is the NCAA a Title IX federal funding recipient? Plaintiffs say yes, pointing to the NCAA’s concussion-research alliance with the Department of Defense. The judge agreed there’s "at least a plausible allegation that NCAA research was either directly or indirectly funded by the DoD," enough to keep Title IX alive for now. 

What’s next: The NCAA must file its answer by Oct. 9, 2025. The court then allows 90 days of limited discovery, through Jan. 7, 2026, solely to determine whether the NCAA is a federal funding recipient via the DoD partnership. After that, any dispositive motion on that issue is due Feb. 6, 2026; if no motion, the parties file a joint case plan by Feb. 13, 2026. 

Bottom line: State defendants are out. The NCAA is still on the hook under Title IX, and the entire case now rides on whether discovery proves a federal money trail to the NCAA’s concussion research.