A transgender swimmer’s medals are to be stripped, the University of Pennsylvania has agreed.

The university will also have to issue formal apologies to every biological female competitor who lost out to a biological male, marking the end to a landmark legal battle.

The US Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) found UPenn violated Title IX by “allowing a male to compete in female athletic programs and occupy female-only intimate facilities”.

The case focused on Lia Thomas, who last competed for the Ivy League school in Philadelphia in 2022, as the first transgender winner of an American collegiate title.

The move comes as part of the Trump administration’s broader attempt to remove transgender athletes from girls’ and women’s sports.

Under the agreement, UPenn agreed to restore all individual Division I swimming records and titles to female athletes who lost out to Thomas, the Education Department said.

The University of Pennsylvania also agreed to send a personalised apology letter to each of those swimmers.

“The department commends UPenn for rectifying its past harms against women and girls, and we will continue to fight relentlessly to restore Title IX’s proper application and enforce it to the fullest extent of the law,” Linda McMahon, the education secretary, said.

The Education Department opened its investigation in February and concluded in April that Penn had violated Title IX, a 1972 law forbidding sex discrimination in education.

Such findings have almost always been resolved through voluntary agreements. If Penn had fought the finding, the department could have moved to refer the case to the Justice Department or pursued a separate process to cut the school’s federal funding.