The Trump administration said Wednesday that California violated Title IX by allowing transgender student-athletes to compete on school sports teams that align with their gender identities.
The administration has given the California Department of Education and the California Interscholastic Federation, a nonprofit independent sports governing body, 10 days to voluntarily change the policies “or risk imminent enforcement action,” including referral to the Justice Department for “proceedings.”
“Although Governor Gavin Newsom admitted months ago it was ‘deeply unfair’ to allow men to compete in women’s sports, both the California Department of Education and the CIF continued as recently as a few weeks ago to allow men to steal female athletes’ well-deserved accolades and to subject them to the indignity of unfair and unsafe competitions,” Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in a statement, referring to a comment Newsom made on his podcast in March.
She added that the state “must swiftly come into compliance with Title IX,” a civil rights law that prohibits sex-based discrimination in federally funded education programs and activities, “or face the consequences that follow,” which could include losing funding.
Izzy Gardon, a spokesperson for Newsom, in an emailed statement alluded to the several threats President Donald Trump has made to cut California’s federal funding and McMahon’s former role as a professional wrestling executive.
“It wouldn’t be a day ending in ‘Y’ without the Trump Administration threatening to defund California. Now Secretary McMahon is confusing government with her WrestleMania days — dramatic, fake, and completely divorced from reality. This won’t stick,” Gardon wrote.
Liz Sanders, director of communications at the California Department of Education, said the department “believes all students should have the opportunity to learn and play at school, and we have consistently applied existing law in support of students’ rights to do so.”
Rebecca Brutlag, director of media for the CIF, said in an email that the organization does not comment on legal matters.
As a result of the alleged Title IX violations, the U.S. Education Department proposed a resolution agreement that it says would bring the state into compliance with federal law. The agreement would require the California Department of Education to issue a notice requiring all interscholastic athletic programs that receive federal funding to forbid trans girls and women from competing on female school sports teams and using female facilities and to adopt definitions of male and female based on birth sex.
The agreement would also require the state department to rescind any past guidance that directed schools or CIF members to follow state law, which requires the inclusion of trans athletes on teams that align with their gender identities, over federal law; restore all records, titles and awards “misappropriated” by trans athletes and issue a personal apology letter to the cisgender female athletes who placed behind them; and mandate all recipients of federal funding that operate school sports programs submit an annual certification confirming they have complied with Title IX.
Trump signed an executive order banning trans girls and women from female school sports teams in February. That same month, the CIF said it would follow state law, and not Trump’s executive order. Days later, the Education Department opened an investigation into the CIF and then began investigating the California Department of Education in April.
Amid the investigations, Trump has criticized California’s inclusion of trans athletes. In May, he described the participation of AB Hernandez, a trans track-and-field athlete, as “NOT FAIR, AND TOTALLY DEMEANING TO WOMEN AND GIRLS” on Truth Social.
Shortly after the criticism, the CIF announced a new pilot entry process that allowed an additional female athlete to compete in each event that Hernandez was competing in at the CIF’s state track-and-field championships.
“The CIF believes this pilot entry process achieves the participation opportunities we seek to afford our student-athletes,” the organization said in a statement at the time.
At the championships last month, Hernandez placed first in the triple jump, tied for first with two competitors in the high jump and placed second in the long jump. She shared each podium with cisgender girls who would’ve placed after her if not for the new policy.
Several of Hernandez’s competitors who spoke to the media said they were happy to compete with her.
“Sharing the podium was nothing but an honor,” Brooke White, who also received second place in the long jump alongside Hernandez, told the San Francisco Chronicle. “Although the publicity she’s been receiving has been pretty negative, I believe she deserves publicity because she’s a superstar, she’s a rock star, she’s representing who she is.”
Though protesters gathered outside of the stadium during the championships, Hernandez told NBC affiliate KCRA of Sacramento that she received overwhelming support while competing.
“I did what I wanted to do,” Hernandez said. “My performance was all I wanted to be good. So all this backlash… I performed my best so that’s all I cared about.”
Twenty-nine states have laws or policies that prohibit trans student-athletes from participating on school sports teams that align with their gender identities, and five of them are temporarily blocked by lawsuits, according to the Movement Advancement Project, an LGBTQ think tank.
Though Republican officials have focused heavily on the issue in recent years, available estimates have shown that there are a small number of trans athletes competing across the country. More than 500,000 student-athletes compete in NCAA championship sports, according to the association, and though the organization doesn’t have official data on how many of them are trans, NCAA President Charlie Baker told a Senate committee in December that he is aware of fewer than 10.
In addition to the investigations into California’s athletics policies, the Trump administration said in a letter last week that it would withhold federal funding from a sex-education program in the state if it didn’t remove all mentions of gender identity.
Elana Ross, a spokesperson for Newsom, said in an email that the governor’s office is reviewing the letter, which it was first made aware of by Fox News.
“To be clear: this is NOT California’s K-12 sex education curriculum,” Ross said. “The California Personal Responsibility Education Program (CA PREP), which receives barely $6 million in federal funding, provides comprehensive sexual health education to adolescents via an effective, evidence-based program model.”
