The Trump administration made good on its threat of legal action earlier this week and is suing California for allowing transgender athletes to compete in K-12 sports.
The U.S. Department of Justice filed suit Wednesday, two days after the California Department of Education said it would not strip trans athletes of their medals or repeal a 2013 law that allows student-athletes to compete on sports teams and use facilities that reflect their gender identity. The U.S. Department of Education said that law violates cisgender girls’ rights under Title IX and had given California 10 days to change its policies. U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said Attorney General Pam Bondi would respond after the state issued its refusal.
Harmeet Dhillon, a conservative San Francisco attorney who now heads the Justice Department’s civil rights division, invoked California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s recent remarks on trans athletes several times, including in the opening paragraph of the suit, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California. The suit names as defendants California’s state education department and the California Interscholastic Federation, a nonprofit that sets standards for school sports.
“These discriminatory policies and practices ignore undeniable biological differences between boys and girls, in favor of anamorphous ‘gender identity,’” the 24-page filing read. “The results of these illegal policies are stark: girls are displaced from podiums, denied awards, and miss out on critical visibility for college scholarships and recognition. In the words of the governor of California, it is ‘deeply unfair’ for girls to compete against boys.”
Dhillon and Bill Essayli, the top Los Angeles-area federal prosecutor, are asking the court to issue a permanent injunction barring California from allowing trans athletes to compete; find that the state and CIF have violated Title IX; compensate female cisgender athletes who have lost to trans opponents; erase past trans athletes’ records; and require the state to submit compliance records with a federal monitor for five years.
Essayli, a former California state legislator, proposed to overturn the state 2013 law shortly before joining the Justice Department. Another attempt by Republican Assemblymember Kate Sanchez to ban trans girls from school sports also failed.
The state Department of Education declined to comment, citing pending litigation. Rebecca Brutlag, the CIF’s spokesperson, was unavailable for comment Wednesday.
Trump’s executive order threatened federal funds to school letting trans girls compete in girls’ sports
Opposition to transgender rights has become a mobilizing issue on the right. On his first day in office in January, President Donald Trump issued an executive order mandating that the United States only recognize female and male sexes, reversing federal protections for transgender and non-binary people that he claimed upheld “gender ideology.”
On Feb. 5, he issued an executive order threatening to withhold federal funds from schools that allowed transgender girls to compete on girls’ teams.
It’s unclear how many trans students compete at the K-12 level throughout the United States. While fewer than 10 compete at the collegiate level, Trump has threatened to pull funding from universities that welcome trans students. Most recently, the University of Pennsylvania agreed to erase former swimmer Lia Thomas’ record in exchange for the White House releasing $175 million in suspended funding.
In Maine, Attorney General Aaron Frey sued after Trump suspended federal funds over a policy similar to California’s and won.
The Justice Department’s suit claims that California has illegally allowed five trans athletes to compete in schools, displacing cisgender girls who lost spots on sports teams or who lost qualifying competitions to them. The suit referred without name to AB Hernandez, a trans 16-year-old high jumper in Southern California who was the subject of protests after Trump singled her out online.
Nena Hernandez, AB’s mother, said she objected to her minor child being “used.”
“I strongly object to the continued use of minor children, especially my own in this matter without consent,” she said. “This misuse of identity, false and misleading information continues to raise serious concerns about privacy and safety.”
U.S. Attorney says CA violated Trump’s executive order
Dhillon said that California violated Trump’s Jan. 20 executive order by protecting students’ gender identities in its anti-discrimination law: “The inherent physiological differences between the two sexes generally make them not similarly situated in athletics. These physiological differences exist regardless of a person’s subjective ‘gender identity.’”
She also cited a letter the CIF sent State Superintendent Tony Thurmond, in which the organization said Newsom’s remarks that allowing transgender athletes to compete with cisgender people was “unfair” led to increased “confusion and concern of the CIF and our member schools with respect to high school student athletes ’ability to compete on interscholastic athletic teams that correspond to their gender identity.’”
Newsom, who drew criticism from LGBTQ allies for his remarks made on his podcast, was in South Carolina on Wednesday to speak to rural Democrats.
He has repeatedly refused to abide by the administration’s attempts to force California to change its policies. Most recently, the CIF piloted a program allowing cisgender athletes to advance to higher competitions if they lost a qualifying position to a trans competitor.
“NO COURT HAS ADOPTED THE INTERPRETATION OF TITLE IX ADVANCED BY THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT, AND NEITHER the Governor, nor THEY, get to wave a magic wand and override it—unlike Donald Trump, California follows the law,” Newsom said in a statement Wednesday.
“At a time when the Trump administration is withholding billions in funds for education, this ongoing attack is a cynical attempt to distract from the Trump administration’s defunding of nearly 3 million girls enrolled in California’s public school.”
Supreme Court case pending on trans athletes
Shannon Minter, the National Center for LGBTQ Rights’ legal director, who has argued on behalf of trans athletes, said the lawsuit was meritless.
“There is not a single federal law that mandates discrimination against transgender students,” he said. “This is literally a legal position they manufactured out of thin air.”
The Supreme Court is set to hear two cases challenging the constitutionality of bans on trans athletes in Idaho and West Virginia. Minter said he was certain that the court’s conservative majority wouldn’t go as far as to “mandate” discrimination but may rule that federal law does not protect trans people.
“At minimum, this should be left to the states,” Minter said of sports bans. “There must be room in our federal system for states to protect transgender students.”
