The University of Pennsylvania’s decision this week to sign an agreement with the Trump administration committing to barring transgender athletes from its women’s sports teams is raising questions about whether other schools might do the same faced with the weight of the federal government.

Penn, President Trump’s alma mater, is the first to sign such an agreement, which the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) proposed following an investigation that found the university violated Title IX, the federal law against sex discrimination in schools, when it allowed Lia Thomas to join the women’s swim team for the 2021-22 season.

Thomas broke three of the six Penn women’s swimming and diving individual freestyle records that year, which the university removed from its leaderboard as part of its agreement with the Trump administration. An addendum to Penn’s women’s swimming all-time school records now reads, “Competing under eligibility rules in effect at the time, Lia Thomas set program records in the 100, 200 and 500 freestyle during the 2021-22 season.”

Penn’s agreement with the OCR also required it to issue a public statement, to be displayed “in a prominent location on its main website,” pledging compliance with Title IX, which the administration has said prohibits transgender girls from girls’ sports, and specifying that it would not allow transgender women to participate in women’s sports or enter women’s athletic facilities, such as locker rooms.

The Ivy League institution was also made to personally apologize to Thomas’s former teammates and adopt “biology-based” definitions of the terms “male” and “female,” consistent with two executive orders Trump signed during his first weeks in office — one that proclaims the U.S. recognizes only two unchangeable sexes, and another stating the federal government opposes trans athletes’ participation in girls’ and women’s sports.

The NCAA, which oversees........

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