CA School Sports Authority Panders to Trump, Offers Consolation Spots to Cis Girls
If a trans girl qualifies for a competition, then a presumed-cis competitor who would not have otherwise made the cut will be granted entry.
The California Interscholastic Federation, which oversees high school sports across the state, functionally decided on Tuesday that trans girls aren’t girls anymore.
The policy change comes after far-right extremist groups like Moms for Liberty and the Proud Boys have spent months reportedly attacking AB Hernandez, a 16-year-old track and field athlete in California, who is transgender—stalking her from meet to meet, doxxing her family, hurling insults at her, and screaming about her genitals in public. (Local advocates say these groups are outside agitators who largely don’t have children actually competing against Hernandez, as per The Free Radical.)
When Hernandez qualified for state finals this week, President Donald Trump personally weighed in on the high school sporting event. He threatened sweeping (but otherwise ambiguous) federal funding cuts targeting California if they did not discriminate against trans girls as directed by Trump’s anti-trans executive orders, which do not hold the weight of law.
“THIS IS NOT FAIR, AND TOTALLY DEMEANING TO WOMEN AND GIRLS,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Please be hereby advised that large scale Federal Funding will be held back, maybe permanently, if the Executive Order on this subject matter is not adhered to.” Trump further said he would be discussing the matter with California Governor Gavin Newsom soon.
The CIF is a non-profit that receives no state or federal funding as part of its annual budget, though the California Department of Education does hold some governing authority. In a May 27 statement, the CIF announced a pilot entry program wherein “any biological female” student athlete who supposedly “would have” qualified for finals, save for Hernandez’s participation, would be extended an opportunity to compete in the 2025 CIF State Track and Field Championships. “The CIF believes this pilot entry process achieves the participation opportunities we seek to afford our student-athletes,” the statement says.
In other words, if a trans girl qualifies for the competition, then a presumed-cis competitor who would not have otherwise made the cut will now be granted entry.
The implications of this backwards arrangement are significant and dire. It shows officials from the largest and arguably most liberal state complying in advance with federal anti-trans attacks. It shows Newsom, a politician who once was the vanguard of LGBTQ allyship, either capitulating to or falling for far-right extremist talking points about trans athletes, which conservatives have flaunted as a rhetorical cudgel to turn the tides of progress back against trans Americans. It shows that a months-long harassment campaign against a teenager was a political gamble that paid off. And it shows that the CIF no longer sees trans women as women; instead, it and Governor Gavin Newsom have accepted the false, extremist narrative which positions the safety and wellbeing of trans girls as fundamentally at odds with preserving the safety and wellbeing of presumed-cis ones.
Through a spokesperson, Governor Gavin Newsom gave the new policy his blessing, calling it “reasonable” and “respectful.” Newsom also previously said he “completely aligned” with Charlie Kirk on some of his gender politics. Newsom has also allegedly spent the better part of the last year trying to kill statewide LGBTQ protections behind the scenes.
But as experts have reiterated time and time again, gender and sex are non-binary. CIF’s updated policy could open the floodgates, as many such policies have before, of attempting to police who is a “real” woman.This has led to explosive conflict—resulting in trans and presumed-cis girls alike needing armed guards to protect themselves from anti-trans harassment.
Meanwhile, earlier this year, Trump attempted to pull school lunch money grants from Maine children over that state’s commitment to protecting its trans students. And sensing the storm ahead, the state of Minnesota beat Trump to the punch, proactively suing the Trump Administration over these threats.
The anti-trans sports crusade has targeted athletes from the little leagues to the Olympics, launching witch hunts into trans or assumed-trans athletes in competitions including poker, hot dog eating and esports.
The new CIF policy does not appear to have a similar gender exception for co-ed sports or men’s athletes who lose to a presumed-trans person. Nor will any such exception be made for other physical “advantages,” such as students who undergo precocious puberty, and may develop more muscle sooner; or students born in the first quarter of their selection year, who will be older and more physically developed than many of their peers, and who have been known to possess a distinct, biological advantage because of it.
Editor’s note: Governor Gavin Newsom has clarified with KCRA that transgender students will be “scored separately” from cis girls and boys, meaning that the state is the first blue state to institute a [limited] sports ban in a pilot program for this sport. This is a developing story.
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Shameful. This is how it starts. This is how we start erasing trans children. And this is why I got involved in the California Democratic party as a delegate, to stop this bs. Newsom has thrown our community under the bus. Pardon my language here, but he's a total tool and self serving asshole.
Now, if they’ll do the same for sports scholarships, and put floor to ceiling stalls in the locker rooms, it will remove all the things that conservatives CLAIM they’re trying to stop. We know it isn’t what they REALLY want. But it would at least remove their current excuses.