By permitting transgender students to participate in school sports in accordance with their gender identity, the California Department of Education and the California Interscholastic Federation violated the civil rights of female students on the basis of sex, the U.S. Department of Education said Wednesday.
The U.S. Department of Education has ended its investigation and is urging California to voluntarily agree to amend the practices it found to be illegal within ten days or face impending enforcement action.
“The California Department of Education and the California Interscholastic Federation 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,” U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said in a statement, despite Governor Gavin Newsom’s admission months ago that it was deeply unfair to allow men to compete in women’s sports.
Our findings today demonstrate that California has not complied with its federal law obligations, and the Trump Administration will continue to vigorously enforce Title IX safeguards for women and girls. The state must quickly comply with Title IX or else it will be held accountable.
California representatives could not be reached for comment at this time.
California
The investigation will examine whether California’s decision to permit transgender pupils to participate in school sports is a violation of the civil rights of cisgender girls.
According to Triston Ezidore, president of the Culver City unified school board, the department’s findings hurt women and girls rather than protecting them.
It is unfair and discriminatory to prevent transgender pupils from playing sports because the president of the United States determines who is sufficiently feminine. In an interview with The Times, he stated that “true protection for female athletes means fighting for fairness and inclusion, not using exclusionary definitions to marginalize vulnerable students.”
Even worse, by requiring women and girls to submit to intrusive inspection, this rule denigrates all female athletes, not just transgender youngsters, he continued. Instead of being safe places for learning and development, it makes school personnel police and enforce a politically driven notion of gender, transforming our schools into identity gatekeepers.
However, Trump supporter Sonja Shaw, who is a candidate for state education superintendent and has opposed pro-LGBTQ+ legislation, praised the department’s decision as a step in the right direction. Shaw is the president of the Chino Valley Unified school board.
CDE and CIF received warnings. She repeated herself. However, they laughed rather than listened. They grinned. They made fun of parents and anybody who spoke up for what was right, and they allowed our daughters to be made fun of, marginalized, and forgotten. They gave girls up to an ideology that took away their accomplishments, safety, and privacy. They have now been exposed as criminals by the federal government.
The California Interscholastic Federation, which manages athletics at over 1,500 high schools, was the subject of an investigation by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights in February after the athletic organization persisted in permitting transgender students to compete in accordance with their gender identity.
Title IX, a historic federal civil rights statute from 1972, requires schools to provide equal opportunity for women and girls, especially in athletics, by outlawing sex-based discrimination in educational programs that receive federal funds.
According to California’s education code, regardless of the gender indicated on the student’s records, pupils are allowed to utilize facilities that correspond to their gender identity and take part in sex-segregated school programs and activities, such as athletic teams and contests.
The U.S. Department of Justice launched an inquiry in May to determine if the Jurupa Unified School District, California, and its interscholastic sports federation were violating the civil rights of female students by permitting transgender children to participate in school sports.
The California Interscholastic Federation advanced a plan on May 27 to duplicate the honors when a transgender athlete wins a tournament in an effort to solve the problem of female athletes not receiving awards.
Athletes who would have won the award under the revised procedure are given the same recognition as if the trans athlete hadn’t participated. AB Hernandez, a 16-year-old transgender junior from Jurupa Valley High School, used this technique to win many medals at the state high school track and field championships.
However, team sports, where it is more challenging to evaluate the impact of a single trans athlete, are not covered by the new CIF rules. Additionally, the rule was not used retroactively to change the outcomes of earlier contests.
The declaration on Wednesday makes it evident that the CIF adjustment does not go far enough for the federal government, and the Trump administration has not publicly acknowledged it.
California is required by the Department of Education’s proposed Resolution Agreement to notify any federally funded organizations that run interscholastic athletic programs that they must adhere to the administration’s interpretation of Title IX.
According to the notice, it must state that Title IX and its implementing regulations prohibit schools from permitting males to play female sports or occupy female intimate facilities, and that federal funding recipients must define male and female using biological definitions.
Additionally, under Title IX, the California Department of Education is required to notify federally funded beneficiaries that any interpretation of California state law that conflicts with the administration’s notices is preempted by federal law.
Additionally, the state and CIF must revoke any guidelines that suggested local school districts or CIF members allow male athletes to play women’s and girls’ sports, according to the Department of Education.
In order to avoid depriving transgender athletes of honors and rewards, CIF and other organizations must also return all individual records, championships, and trophies to female athletes that were stolen by male competitors competing in female competitions.
An Education Department spokesman directed The Times to McMahon’s appearance on Fox and Friends on Wednesday when asked for further details on the penalties California might face for failing to comply with the federal mandates.
“If California doesn’t, among other things, send a letter of apology to all of the participants, female participants in sports, and return the titles that were taken away from these women who competed and lost to a male in the sports,” McMahon stated in the Fox interview, the state could lose federal funding in its K–12 schools.
McMahon responded, “I’d have to look at that to be exact because they’re different levels of it, but it could be a substantial amount of money that would come into California,” when asked how much funding was at stake.
Last month, President Trump threatened to stop federal funds to California if the state continued to permit transgender athletes to play in women’s sports. Trump made this a major campaign topic for the 2024 election.
Trump attacked Newsom on Truth Social, claiming that the state still permits men to participate in women’s sports illegally.
I’ll talk to him today to see which direction he wants to take. “Newsom,” Trump said. If required, I am directing local authorities to prevent the transitioning individual from participating in the State Finals in the interim. This situation is just absurd!
In early June, the Department of Justice warned school districts that they may face legal repercussions if they did not prohibit these athletes from competing, thus increasing the pressure on schools.
However, California Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond wrote the following day to state that the federal warning was legally meaningless. “School districts are still required to adhere to state law that permits transgender youth to compete,” he said.
