Transgender runner sues Princeton for keeping her out of women's race
Schreiner's lawsuit claimed the athlete attempted to participate in the women's 200-meter sprint at the Larry Ellis Invitational as one of the 141 participants unattached to a university or club. The suit alleges officials told Schreiner the athlete could not participate 15 minutes before the race began.
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'I do not want to assume, but you are transgender,' a Princeton official allegedly told Schreiner, per the complaint.
'The actions of the two Princeton officials were in blatant and willful disregard of Sadie's rights based on Sadie's rights as a transgender woman under controlling New Jersey law, thereby causing Sadie Shreiner to foreseeable emotional and physical harm,' the lawsuit argued.
Schreiner alleges the university violated the New Jersey Law Against Discrimination, which designates 'gender identity or expression' as a protected status.
Fox News Digital has reached out to Princeton University for a response.
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Schreiner previously competed for Rochester Institute of Technology's (RIT) women's track and field team and gained national notoriety for dominating female opponents and frequent social media videos boasting about it as an openly transgender competitor.
However, Schreiner was ruled ineligible to compete for RIT after the NCAA revised its gender eligibility policy Feb. 6, one day after President Donald Trump signed the 'Keeping Men Out of Women's Sports' executive order on Feb. 5.
3 Sadie Schreiner races to qualify in the 400m race at the 2024 NCAA DIII outdoor track and field championships
The Washington Post via Getty Im
RIT provided a statement to Fox News Digital confirming this on Feb. 12.
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'We continue to follow the NCAA participation policy for transgender student-athletes following the Trump administration's executive order. Sadie is not participating in the next meet,' the statement said.
Schreiner then competed at the USA Track & Field Open Masters Championships on March 1.
There, Schreiner competed in the women's 400-meter dash and 200-meter dash, taking first place in both events.
Schreiner won the 400-meter dash by default, as the other participants in the event, Anna Vidolova and Amaris Hiatt, had no recorded times and were listed as DNS (did not start).
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3 Sadie Schreiner wears a transgender flag in her hair on the awards stand after finishing 3rd in the finals of the 200m race at the 2024 NCAA DIII outdoor track and field championships.
The Washington Post via Getty Im
In the 200-meter dash, Schreiner defeated 14-year-old runner-up Zwange Edwards, 16-year-old third-place finisher Zariah Hargrove, 15-year-old Leah Walker and 18-year-old Ainsley Rausch. That event also had multiple participants listed as DNS, including 18-year-old Jordan Carr, 46-year-old Amanda Taylor, Vidolova again and 16-year-old Paula Damiens.
However, weeks after that, Schreiner posted an Instagram video claiming to have likely competed in Schreiner's last organized track meet in the U.S. after a USATF event in Maine.
'I very likely just ran what will be my last meet in the United States,' Schreiner said, later adding, 'I will find a way to keep competing, but I doubt that will be in the United States.'
Schreiner said USATF changed its policy on transgender eligibility from the one used by the International Olympic Committee (IOC), which allows biological males to compete in the women's category, to the one used by World Athletics, which bans any athlete who has undergone male puberty from competing as a woman. The USATF's official transgender eligibility policy does now reference the World Athletics guidelines on its official webpage. It previously referenced the IOCs policy, as seen in an archive via Wayback Machine.
3 Sadie Schreiner puts a transgender flag in her hair.
The Washington Post via Getty Im
Schreiner has been a controversial figure in women's track and field in the past year, especially after an appearance at the 2024 NCAA Division III Outdoor Track & Field Championships in May.
Earlier that month, Schreiner competed at the Liberty League Championship and won both the women's 200- and 400-meter, breaking the 400-meter record in the process. Schreiner would have finished last by more than two seconds in the men's competition.
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In late January, Schreiner bragged after winning an event against female opponents.
'Not the race I was looking for at all this week, my spikes nearly fell off on the turn and with a poor start my time wasn't nearly what I wanted,' the runner wrote in an Instagram post.
'The good news is that the season just started, and I'm going to leave everything on the track at nationals,' Schreiner added with a transgender pride flag emoji.
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On Jan. 17, Schreiner took first place in the 200- and 400-meter dashes at the Brockport Friday Night Rust Buster, taking top spots over two female seniors. In the 200-meter dash, Schreiner beat RIT teammate Caroline Hill by 1.5 seconds and took first place in the 400-meter dash from Brockport's Marissa Wise by nearly 3.5 seconds. Schreiner's results achieved automatic qualification for the All-Atlantic Regional Track and Field Championships.
On Jan. 24, Schreiner took first place in the 200-meter dash at the RIT Friday Meet, beating out Liberty League junior Lexi Rodriguez of Brockport with an even faster time. On Jan. 30, Schreiner took first place in the 200- and 400-meter dashes against Liberty League opponents.
Schreiner also spoke out against states and colleges that were not offering the trans athlete a full scholarship when Schreiner wanted to transfer in December. The athlete blamed laws in 25 states that prohibit trans athletes from competing with girls and women.
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'Among all the hurdles transfers usually have, there is an extra layer because it is trans, 50% of the country banned me from participating and that meant I couldn't attend any of those colleges even if they reached out to me with a full ride,' Schreiner said.
'It also became clear that states that did, no matter how adamant the coaches were to have me on their teams, the college administrations would usually stop them from allowing me to participate.'
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New York Post
5 days ago
- New York Post
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On Sunday, I outed myself: I am Track Athlete A in a major lawsuit, Gaines v. NCAA, that aims to win justice for women in college sports. For two years, I've lived in the shadows, watching my records, my opportunities, my dignity and my voice stripped away — not by happenstance, but by design, as colleges applied rules allowing male athletes into women's sports. My university, the Rochester Institute of Technology, and my own coaches applauded as a man competed on our women's team, erased my records and those of other women, and was ushered into our locker room. Advertisement 5 Caroline Hill, a sprinter on the women's track team at Rochester Institute of Technology competing in a race. @carolineblythehill/Instagram He didn't just steal medals — he stole the experiences we female athletes were promised: a safe and supportive environment, privacy, unity and leaders we could trust. I felt small. Erased. Federal law was supposed to protect young women like me. Instead, Title IX was ignored. Advertisement I'm speaking now because no other girl should be forced to feel insignificant just to make room for a man. I've been running track since I was 11 years old. The joy of running and the reward of perseverance through adversity are deeply personal to me. Advertisement 5 NCAA President Charlie Baker speaks during the organization's Division I Business Session at their annual convention, Jan. 15, 2025, in Nashville, Tennessee. AP I'm hard of hearing, so there's a lot about my sport I can't take for granted — such as hearing my coaches' and teammates' voices during practice, or the starter's commands at the line. At meets without a microphone, I sometimes missed the critical 'Set!' command. I'd have to throw my hand in the air to stop the race, drawing confused looks — and once, in a championship meet, a wave of boos from the crowd that nearly brought me to tears. Advertisement But I kept going. I learned to adapt, to fight through setbacks, and I earned my place through grit and determination. 5 Caroline Hill holding her Rochester Institute of Technology diploma. @carolineblythehill/Instagram By my sophomore year at RIT, I was a team captain and the school record-holder in the 60-, 200- and 300-meter dash. But what I never expected — what I could not overcome — was lining up next to someone with the unmistakable physical advantages of a male body. No amount of training prepared me for that. Everything changed my junior year when Sadie Schreiner, a male athlete who identifies as a woman, joined our women's track team. At his very first NCAA meet competing in the women's category, Schreiner effortlessly broke both my 200-meter and 300-meter records. Advertisement 5 Sadie Schreiner, C, finishes 3rd in the finals of the 200m race at the 2024 NCAA DIII outdoor track and field championships on May 25, 2024, in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. The Washington Post via Getty Images I never imagined I could be made to feel so worthless. Later during that season, Jacqueline Nicholson, RIT's executive director of athletics, met with the team to tell us that this man had no physical advantage over us, that the university supported him, and that we should too. That's how I learned no one in charge was going to stick up for me, or any other woman on my team. Advertisement I felt humiliated to compete for a school so willing to discard women's rights, wearing its jersey as if I silently endorsed my own violation. But worst of all was how it drove a wedge through the heart and soul of our squad, robbing us of the intangible experiences and deep camaraderie that are built within a team of women. 5 Sadie Schreiner wears a transgender flag in her hair on the awards stand after finishing 3rd in the finals of the 200m race at the 2024 NCAA DIII outdoor track and field championships on May 25, 2024, in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. The Washington Post via Getty Images When NCAA President Charlie Baker announced in February that the association would comply with President Donald Trump's executive order banning male athletes from women's sports, I felt hope. Advertisement But RIT communicated no changes — and Schreiner kept competing. While he was no longer earning points for RIT at women's track meets, he was instead running unattached — still beating women, just without the school's name next to his. Despite the headlines about the NCAA's policy changes, Schreiner continued attending our practices, using our women's locker room and receiving workouts and coaching attention meant to benefit and develop our women's team. Get opinions and commentary from our columnists Subscribe to our daily Post Opinion newsletter! Thanks for signing up! Enter your email address Please provide a valid email address. By clicking above you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Never miss a story. Check out more newsletters Advertisement Would this betrayal never end? I graduated in May, and my college sports career is over. But it was permanently damaged by the opportunities I lost, the experiences I earned and can never get back. I joined Riley Gaines' lawsuit anonymously, fearing retaliation at RIT and elsewhere. Yet with distance from campus, I have gained clarity and strength. I never want another woman to go through what my team was forced to endure in plain sight. For violating the federal rights of women, and for abandoning us so openly, the NCAA must pay a price so high that no school or organization will ever dare to do such a thing again. We need the law, and the consequences for breaking it, to be certain and clear. I deserve my records back, and I want the NCAA held accountable for taking them — and so much else — from me. Caroline Hill is a former sprinter and captain for the Rochester Institute of Technology.
Fox News
10-08-2025
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First RIT women's track runner comes forward about sharing team and locker room with viral trans athlete
EXCLUSIVE: Caroline Hill turned down multiple Division I women's track and field scholarships to compete for Division III Rochester Institute of Technology. Her talents allowed her to break the program record in the 200-meter and 300-meter early in her collegiate career. But then she had to watch both records fall to transgender teammate Sadie Schreiner, all while feeling "uncomfortable" sharing a locker room with her trans teammate for the next two years. Then, even after Schreiner was ruled ineligible to compete when the NCAA changed its transgender policy on Feb. 6, Hill alleges Schreiner continued to use the women's locker room and train with the team for another month. RIT has declined to comment on Hill's allegations. Now, Hill is the first of Schreiner's former RIT teammates to speak out about the experience. Hill previously joined Riley Gaines' lawsuit vs. the NCAA in 2023 – Schreiner's first official year on her team – as an anonymous plaintiff. But now, she has come forward to put her name down. Hill claims she and her teammates were introduced to Schreiner as their future teammate in 2022. Schreiner did not officially begin to compete until 2023. "He was practicing with us a little bit during the preseason," Hill said of the situation in 2022. Fox News Digital was unable to verify why Schreiner did not officially compete for RIT in 2022. When Schreiner began competing the following year, Hill claims the two of them were paired up as "workout buddies" by their coaches. "We were sort of expected to be training buddies because we're both 'women' on the women's team running the same events," Hill said. "Personally, I saw it as 'This is not fair. This is definitively unfair'… the expectation was that we are equals, being perceived as equals by the coach. That was what I had a harder time with." Hill even made it a point to protest the situation to her coach and administrators, but to no avail. Hill even alleges that Jacqueline Nicholson, RIT executive director of intercollegiate athletics, told her and the other women on the team that Schreiner had "less testosterone" than some of them. "I had a couple conversations with her. She was very firm in that 'This is what the NCAA is enforcing. We're supporting it,'" Hill said. "We even had a meeting with the women on the team where she addressed us and said, 'We support this athlete competing on the team. Some of you women have more testosterone than he does,' making it seem like it was totally fair and just as if we had a problem with it, that was not OK. It was very, very harsh." Hill said her conversation with her sprint coach was futile as well. "I was very vulnerable expressing my feelings about the male athlete competing and training with us. And he was not very empathetic," Hill said. "He sort of tried to diminish my thoughts, and it was a lot of deflection. It's like, 'Well, we shouldn't be focusing on that.'" Hill also claims that other women on the team were supportive of competing with Schreiner. "A lot of my teammates, um, were very supportive of this athlete competing and training with us," Hill said. In Schreiner's second year on the team in 2024, the trans athlete broke Hill's program record in the 300-meter, clearing Hill's previous record, which she set her sophomore year in 2022, by 1.42 seconds. In early 2025, Schreiner broke the program record in the 200-meter with a 24.46, besting Hill's best time of 25.82, which she set that same year. She ranks just behind Schreiner for second-best in program history. While Hill had to watch Schreiner break her collegiate records on the track, an even more personal dilemma awaited her in the locker room. "I remember one day, I think I was changing, and all of a sudden this athlete is just in the locker room, and being very just shocked and kind of mortified obviously because it's uncomfortable to have a male in the locker room. And so actually his locker was right next to mine," Hill said. "It's kind of a social area, but he really didn't talk to anyone." Hill also said Schreiner never changed in the women's locker room. Still, Hill said she actively tried to avoid changing in front of Schreiner, but that wasn't always an option. "If he was like standing there doing something or whatever, I would kind of wait for him to be somewhere else before I changed," Hill said. "Or there were times where I did, but I would just change as quickly as I could and, you know, I was able to just like suck it up, I guess. Not that I should have had to do that." Hill spent the two years of her collegiate career sharing those spaces and competitions with Schreiner. After President Donald Trump signed the "Keeping Men Out of Women's Sports" executive order on Feb. 5, which aimed to put an end to situations like the one at RIT, the NCAA complied the next day, changing its policy to only allow biological females to compete as women. Hill said the coaches never officially informed the female athletes that Schreiner wouldn't be competing with them anymore. RIT provided a statement to Fox News Digital on Feb. 12 that read, "We continue to follow the NCAA participation policy for transgender student-athletes following the Trump administration's executive order. Sadie is not participating in the next meet." However, Hill alleged that this didn't mean the end of seeing Schreiner in the locker room or at practice. "He was still changing with us and all that. I was sort of confused," Hill said. "Utilizing our coaches, our facilities, our resources during a practice times even though the rules had been changed. So it didn't end with the rule change. He kept training with us. Not that we were training buddies, but he was always there at the same time as I was… I would say a month after [the rule change]." Schreiner's attorney, Susie Cirilli of Cirilli LLC, told Fox News Digital, "We are not responding at this time," in response to a request for comment on Hill's statements. Eventually, Schreiner made an effort to compete in non-NCAA sanctioned events. Schreiner competed at the USA Track & Field Open Masters Championships on March 1 in New York. There, Schreiner took first place in the women's 400-meter dash and 200-meter dash. Weeks after that, Schreiner posted an Instagram video claiming to have likely competed in Schreiner's last organized track meet in the U.S. after a USATF event in Maine. "I very likely just ran what will be my last meet in the United States," Schreiner said, later adding, "I will find a way to keep competing, but I doubt that will be in the United States." Schreiner said USATF changed its policy on transgender eligibility from the one used by the International Olympic Committee (IOC), which allows biological males to compete in the women's category, to the one used by World Athletics, which bans any athlete who has undergone male puberty from competing as a woman. The USATF's official transgender eligibility policy does now reference the World Athletics guidelines on its official webpage. It previously referenced the IOC's policy, as seen in an archive via Wayback Machine. Then in July, Schreiner filed a lawsuit against Princeton University after the school allegedly excluded the athlete from a May 3 women's race. Schreiner's lawsuit claimed the athlete attempted to participate in the women's 200-meter sprint at the Larry Ellis Invitational as one of the 141 participants unattached to a university or club. The suit alleges officials told Schreiner the athlete could not participate 15 minutes before the race began. "The actions of the two Princeton officials were in blatant and willful disregard of Sadie's rights based on Sadie's rights as a transgender woman under controlling New Jersey law, thereby causing Sadie Schreiner to foreseeable emotional and physical harm," the lawsuit argued. Cirilli provided an exclusive statement to Fox News Digital about Schreiner's lawsuit against Princeton. "The action of the two Princeton officials were in blatant and willful disregard of Sadie's rights as a transgender woman under controlling New Jersey Law," the statement read. "The actions of the defendants were utterly intolerable in a civilized community and go beyond the possible bounds of decency." Meanwhile, Hill, having graduated from RIT with a degree in graphic design, is pressing ahead as a now-public member of the Gaines vs. NCAA lawsuit. Hill said fear of retaliation from fellow students at the school and elsewhere prevented her from speaking out against the situation earlier. But now, as the culture in America has shifted, Hill is proudly putting her name out there as an advocate to protect women's sports. "I was definitely a little worried being on campus, being on my team, um, with administration that felt strongly, I get that they were against the lawsuit… I was a little worried about my own safety and that things might escalate in a way that I couldn't foresee," Hill said. "I feel like it's worthwhile to come forward [now] just because I have the ability to use what has happened to me as a way to show that harm is being done to women, to female athletes… it is scary to put yourself out there because I'm sure there's a lot of girls out there that feel like they can't and don't have a voice. "The NCAA has definitely made it so that they, a lot of women and girls don't feel like they can speak out, so I want to do it." Hill is calling for RIT to apologize to her and reinstate her as the program record-holder for the 200- and 300-meter.
Yahoo
10-08-2025
- Yahoo
Former RIT runner Caroline Hill speaks out on sharing team, locker room with trans athlete
Caroline Hill is the first RIT women's track athlete to speak out about the school allowing biological male Sadie Schreiner on the team after years of silence.
