Her comments come as California legislation becomes a central focus in the national debate on the participation of transgender athletes in sports and elucidate her stance on one of the few issues currently dividing the state’s Democrats.

During a recent appearance on “Piers Morgan Uncensored,” Yee said, “I think transgender athletes are women athletes and they should be able to compete.”

Yee, who served as California state controller from 2015 to 2023, told Morgan that transgender female athletes have gone through a physical transition and should be able to participate in women’s sports. However, she added that “there is still some discussion about whether they should compete in the same field” and that more research is needed on the physiology of transgender athletes.

Her view differs from that of Gov. Gavin Newsom, who called transgender athletes’ participation in women’s sports “deeply unfair” and warned that it was hurting Democrats at the polls during a March episode of his podcast featuring conservative activist Charlie Kirk. Newsom’s comments garnered backlash from some party members, who accused the governor of abandoning a vulnerable minority group for political gain.

When Morgan asked Yee if there should be a gender-neutral 2028 L.A. Olympics where everyone competes in the same category, she said, “I think it’s a conversation worth having.”

“If the physicality of the sexes bear true to that [gender neutrality], including with transgender people, yes, it [the Olympics] should be gender neutral,” she said. “I don’t think we know enough.”

Yee suggested that there are some sporting events where all athletes can compete on a level playing field. When asked to name one, she suggested short-distance track and field events such as the 100-meter sprint — a notion Morgan decried as “insane.”

The Olympic record time among male athletes for the 100-meter dash is 9.63 seconds, set by Usain Bolt in 2012, while the women’s Olympic record is 10.61 seconds, set by Elaine Thompson-Herah in 2021.

Yee said she was not a sports expert but emphasized her overall stance that all athletes, including transgender athletes, should have an equal opportunity to participate.

“I think there’s a lot of information we need to learn about what’s really happening with the ability of trans athletes to compete, but my statement is about being able to be sure that they can compete,” she said.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton appeared on Morgan’s show after Yee and called her comments jaw dropping.

“I think we may just have seen another California Democrat candidate torpedo their campaign for governor,” he said, referencing the criticism former Rep. Katie Porter has received over recordings of combative and rude comments to a journalist and a staff member.

Hilton said that as governor he would overturn AB 1266. This law took effect in 2014 and requires that California schools allow students to participate in sporting activities consistent with their gender identities, regardless of the gender listed on their record.

“This is obviously discrimination against girls,” said Hilton. “I’m confident that, as governor, I can actually overturn that law and bring some sanity back to this whole situation.”

In July, the Trump administration sued California for allowing transgender athletes to compete on school sports teams that match their gender identity, alleging that this violates a federal law that prohibits gender-based discrimination in schools by allowing biological males to compete against biological females.

This week, Newsom signed Assembly Bill 749, which creates a commission to examine whether a new state board or department is needed to improve access to youth sports regardless of race, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, income or geographic location.

The bill was decried by some Republican legislators as an attempt to create a body that will advocate for the participation of transgender athletes in women’s sports.

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The California Interscholastic Federation will let an additional student compete and potentially offer an extra medal in three events in which a trans athlete is competing. The athlete, high school junior AB Hernandez, is the second seed in the triple jump and will also participate in the long jump and high jump.

It may be the first effort by a high school sports governing body to expand participation when trans athletes are participating, and it reflects efforts to find a middle ground in the debate over trans girls’ participation in youth sports.

“The CIF values all of our student-athletes and we will continue to uphold our mission of providing students with the opportunity to belong, connect, and compete while complying with California law,” the group said in a statement after announcing its rule change.

State law allows trans students to compete on sex-segregated sports teams consistent with their gender identity.

President Donald Trump threatened this week to pull federal funding from California unless it bars trans female athletes from competing on girls teams. The U.S. Department of Justice also said it would investigate the state federation and the district that includes Hernandez’s high school to determine whether they violated federal sex discrimination law by allowing trans girls to compete in girls sports.

What the new participation and medaling policy will look like

The meet, which is taking place at a high school near Fresno, will open up the girls triple jump, long jump and high jump to one additional athlete each who would have qualified had Hernandez not participated. Hernandez will compete in the preliminaries Friday for a chance to advance to the finals Saturday.

Under the pilot policy, if a transgender athlete medals, their ranking would not displace a “biological female” student from medaling, the federation said.

The federation said the rule would open the field to more “biological female” athletes. One expert said the change may itself be discriminatory because it creates an extra spot for “biological female” athletes but not for other trans athletes.

The federation did not specify how they define “biological female” or how they would verify whether a competitor meets that definition.

Medical experts say gender is a spectrum, not a binary structure consisting of only males and females.

The two-day meet is expected to draw attention from a coalition of protesting parents and students. Critics have objected Hernandez’s participation and heckled her in qualifying events earlier this month. Leaders from the conservative California Family Council joined Republican state lawmakers Thursday for a press conference blasting the policy change and saying Hernandez shouldn’t be allowed to compete.

“If they have to create special exceptions and backdoor rule changes to placate frustrated athletes, that’s not equality, that’s a confession,” Sophia Lorey, the council’s outreach director, said in a statement. “Girls’ sports should be for girls, full stop.”

CIF Executive Director Ron Nocetti urged participants and bystanders to behave respectfully toward all student-athletes in a message shared in the championship program.

Nationwide debate over trans athletes’ participation

A recent AP-NORC poll found that about 7 in 10 U.S. adults think transgender female athletes should not be allowed to participate in girls and women’s sports at the high school, college or professional level. That view was shared by about 9 in 10 Republicans and roughly half of Democrats. Trump won Fresno County, where the meet will be held, in 2024.

Hernandez told the publication Capital & Main earlier this month that she couldn’t worry about critics.

“I’m still a child, you’re an adult, and for you to act like a child shows how you are as a person,” she said.

She noted that she has lost some of her events, saying that disproved arguments that she can’t be beat.

Hernandez is expected to perform well, particularly in the triple jump, in which she has a personal best of over 41 feet (12.5 meters). That is more than 3 feet (1 meter) short of a national record set in 2019. She’s the fifth seed in the long jump but ranked much lower in the high jump.

California’s state championship stands out from that of other states because of the number of competitors athletes are up against to qualify.

More than 57,000 high schoolers participated in outdoor track and field in California during the 2023-2024 school year, according to a survey by the National Federation of State High School Associations. California had the second-largest number of high school outdoor track-and-field athletes, only behind Texas.

Of the 12 high school athletes who have set national records in the girls triple jump between 1984 and 2019, eight have been from California, according to the national sports governing body.

Davis Whitfield, the national federation’s chief operating officer, called a state championship “the pinnacle” for high school student-athletes.

“It’s certainly a once-in-a-lifetime experience in some cases to participate in a state championship event,” he said.

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The Democratic governor made the comments during an hourlong interview with conservative commentator Charlie Kirk, a loyal supporter of President Trump. The podcast explored the vulnerabilities of the Democratic Party in the wake of Republicans taking control of the White House and Congress after the November election.

Newsom also distanced himself from some aspects of “wokeness,” telling Kirk that no one in the governor’s office ever used the inclusive term “Latinx,” or started any meeting by sharing their preferred pronouns.

From the outset, the governor said his “This Is Gavin Newsom” podcast would feature conversations with “some of the biggest leaders and architects in the MAGA movement.” The podcast marks the latest in a series of publicity moves from a governor who is seeking to expand his audience nationally and is widely expected to enter the 2028 presidential contest. Newsom launched a separate podcast in the summer and will release his third book later this year.

Kirk, who told Newsom that he talks with Trump about twice a week, raised the issue of transgender athletes as a major political vulnerability for Democrats, saying it was one of many issues where they were out of touch with most Americans. Newsom agreed with Kirk’s criticism.

“The issue of fairness is completely legit, so I completely align with you, and we’ve got to own that. We’ve got to acknowledge it,” Newsom said.

Assemblymember Christopher M. Ward (D-San Diego), the chair of the California Legislative LGBTQ Caucus, said he was “profoundly sickened and frustrated” by Newsom’s remarks.

“This is an incredibly rare circumstance, where somebody who is transgender, and, by the way, is well enough and is able enough to be able to successfully compete in sports,” Ward said. “So if this is what we want to spend 90% of our time focusing on, we are losing the sight of why people actually send us to Sacramento to work on California’s biggest pressing problems.”

During the interview, Kirk pointed to the San Jose State women’s volleyball team, which was recently embroiled in controversy after current and former players and an associate coach tried to have a trans player removed from the roster by filing a federal lawsuit. A judge later ruled the player could compete.

Newsom did criticize Republicans for trying to “weaponize” the issue of transgender athletes, who he said account for a tiny percentage of those participating in sports and belong to a community that deserves compassion, not cruelty.

“There’s also a humility and a grace that these poor people are more likely to commit suicide, have anxiety and depression, and the way that people talk down to vulnerable communities is an issue that I have a hard time with,” Newsom said.

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“SAVE GIRLS SPORTS,” read some. “WE’RE ALL EQUAL,” read others.

The dueling shirts provide a stark visual of what her schoolmates think about her competing on the girls’ cross-country and track teams. It’s made her feel both proud and anxious, she said — and a bit like being in a fishbowl.

“A lot of people have said things, both good and bad,” said M.L., who is 16 and transgender. She asked to be identified only by initials because of the threats young athletes like her have faced nationwide. “It’s nerve-racking.”

Individual school hallways, sports fields and tracks like those at Martin Luther King High School in Riverside, which M.L. attends, are the real front lines in the nation’s contentious battle over transgender athletes.

More than the White House, where President Trump issued an executive order Wednesday purporting to ban transgender girls from sports. Or the legislative halls of Washington or Sacramento, where bills propose similar bans. Or the Riverside Unified School Board, which heard its latest round of debate on the matter Thursday.

School is where the humanity of trans kids is most apparent, where their earnestness and fear are most palpable and where the sweeping pronouncements of people such as Trump about the supposed threat they pose can seem most alarmist and reductive.

“They’re attacking real kids and real families,” M.L.’s mother said. “Our kids are just trying to be themselves, and if anything, they’re the ones that should be afraid of all the hate.”

M.L. said she has felt buoyed by the support she’s received from her school administrators — for which the school is being sued — and from many of her classmates. But she said it also feels as if the Trump administration is “putting a massive, unnecessary target” on the backs of kids like her, in part by suggesting it is “common sense” to conclude transgender kids simply don’t exist or that their only motivation for playing sports is to dominate their cisgender classmates.

“I don’t think that anyone would put themselves through what we have to go through just to win,” she said.

S.M., a 17-year-old transgender classmate who also requested to go by initials, agreed.

She had been excited to compete her senior year in pole vaulting, she said, but it all became too much amid Trump’s antagonism and the recent flood of attention her school has received from anti-transgender activists from across the country.

Being in the thick of the debate felt so much like being underwater — suffocating and scary — that she quit King’s track and field team.

“It was like you couldn’t breathe,” she said.

Controversy hits home

M.L. — an avid runner, experienced chess player and video game aficionado — is 5 feet 4 and slight, about 120 pounds. She has long, light hair, a ready smile, and is set to graduate early, with plans to study quantum physics and astrophysics in college.

She speaks in sophisticated sentences that seem beyond her years and comes across in conversation as utterly guileless — but clearly determined.

“That’s kind of been her vibe her entire life,” her mother said. “She’s always been really tiny, she’s always been super genius.”

She also has a speech impairment that causes her to mispronounce certain words, “so she’s always been different,” her mother said. “But she’s never really dwelled on that.”

After transferring to King from another Riverside school last year, M.L. joined the girls’ cross-country team. In October, she was added to a select varsity squad and chosen to run for the school at the Mt. SAC Cross Country Invitational, including in the prominent meet’s team sweepstakes race.

That did not sit well with some of her teammates, including a girl who was bumped from competing in the sweepstakes after posting a slower time than M.L.’s. That girl’s parents protested, and her mother filed a Title IX complaint alleging that her daughter was being illegally discriminated against.

At the Oct. 26 invitational, the bumped girl, two other girls and more than a dozen parents and grandparents wore the “SAVE GIRLS SPORTS” shirts. On the back the shirts read, “IT’S COMMON SENSE. XX [does not equal] XY,” a reference to the different chromosome pairings of biological females and males.

The following week, the bumped girl and a junior varsity athlete wore the shirts to practice, prompting King athletic director and assistant principal Amanda Chann to intervene. Chann told them to take off or cover up the shirts because they were creating a hostile environment.

When the bumped girl’s mother demanded a broader explanation, school officials said the shirts violated school policies, because they could reasonably be understood to target M.L. with the intent to “intimidate, belittle, or hurt” her.

Before the month was out, the bumped girl, her JV friend and their parents had sued the school district and administrators, claiming their actions had violated the girls’ free speech and religious rights, as well as their Title IX rights as female athletes.

A couple of weeks later, more than 100 students wore “SAVE GIRLS SPORTS” or similar shirts to school, causing another disruption.

Around the same time, S.M. was gearing up for her senior pole vaulting season, planning to compete with other girls after previously competing against boys. She thought her teammates backed her and would speak out against the shirts targeting M.L., she said, but instead “it was just crickets.”

“Obviously I felt angry. I felt like a joke,” she said. “I just felt a lot of feelings — and I needed to spill.”

She took to her Instagram and posted a message to her “close friends” — a pre-selected group of about 30 people. Written atop a picture of her giving the peace sign in her track gear, it was typical teenage venting: a bit braggy, a bit crude, projecting a sassy confidence that wasn’t truly there.

“i hate a bitch that could sit there and undermine me as an athlete just cus i’m trans and yes i’m still pressed abt this. to say i have an ‘advantage’ because i was born a boy should earn u a mf sock to the face cus wtf do i look like??? john cena??” S.M. wrote, referring to the hulky actor and professional wrestler.

She wrote that she had always struggled vaulting against boys. But she had worked hard, wasn’t going to let people bully her any longer and intended to be a “top girl” athlete her senior year.

“If you don’t respect me as a female athlete,” she wrote, “you do not respect me as a female!!!”

S.M. said she didn’t intend the message as a threat to anyone, believing it would remain essentially private.

Zooming out

In recent years, a network of anti-transgender activists has spread across the country with the support of mega-churches, major conservative groups and, lately, the Trump administration.

The network counts among its members cisgender female athletes and other social media influencers who have built huge followings. Their message: that transgender athletes pose a grave danger to cisgender girls and to women’s sports overall.

The argument is part of a broader rejection of transgender rights that Trump and his closest allies have zeroed in on as a winning issue that can activate more Republican voters and ultimately help them win over blue states such as California. Riverside County is on their radar.

Days before the election, Trump’s sons spent time with evangelical Pastor Tim Thompson, leader of the 412 Church in Murrieta, and a cohort of other Riverside conservatives, including Sheriff Chad Bianco and Assemblymember Bill Essayli (R-Corona).

At one event, according to video posted by Thompson, Donald Trump Jr. said the pastor was right to focus his political efforts on flipping local school boards conservative, including by harping on transgender issues.

“I would almost give up everything if we could control the school boards,” Trump Jr. said. He later suggested, falsely, that “rainbow-haired freak” teachers and other Democrats are trying to “mutilate” the bodies of 3-year-old children behind their parents’ backs.

In the days since his inauguration, President Trump has issued a series of executive orders aimed at reining in transgender rights — including by withholding federal funding from hospitals that provide gender-affirming care to transgender youths and from schools that maintain diversity policies that protect transgender students.

On Wednesday, Trump signed an order purporting to ban transgender women and girls from sports. The signing ceremony was held at the White House, in a room filled with little girls and some of the same anti-transgender activists that have been active in the fight in Riverside.

“The actions we’re taking today are the latest in a sweeping effort to reclaim our culture and our laws from the radical left crusade against biological reality,” Trump said.

Under the spotlight

For weeks, the lawsuit filed by the cross-country girls and their families — with the help of the conservative group Advocates for Faith & Freedom — had been gaining attention and drawing more voices into the debate at King High.

The suing girls had been featured on Fox News, where they complained about M.L. being allowed to wear transgender pride bracelets at school while their shirts were banned. As the debate reached the Riverside Unified school board, snippets of parents and students criticizing M.L.’s participation on the cross-country team began appearing online, too.

In one example, a King student complained to the board about not being able to wear her “SAVE GIRLS SPORTS” shirt at school and feeling that school administrators were ignoring cisgender girls’ rights to privacy, safety and opportunities.

“One boy’s feelings don’t matter more than all women’s physical safety, the integrity of sports, and the objective truth,” she said.

Riley Gaines, a swimmer turned prominent anti-transgender activist, posted the girl’s remarks to her 1.4 million X followers, writing, “Are you listening, @RiversideUSD?”

Gaines had also helped circulate another post a couple of weeks prior: S.M.’s tough-talking Instagram rant to her close friends, which had somehow leaked.

Gaines repeatedly called S.M. a boy and said her “mf sock to the face” remark was “a direct threat” that should lead to S.M.’s explusion.

“He’s right about this: we don’t respect him as a female, because he isnt one,” Gaines wrote.

As other influencers piled on, Essayli also recirculated Gaines’ post — spreading S.M.’s face further around the internet. He wrote that Riverside Unified was “completely out of control” and “mishandling this situation.”

S.M. was terrified, she said, saying it “felt like all these eyes were on me,” and that “I was canceled forever.”

Her mother said she was livid that adults — including an elected official — were willing to put a teenager on blast to win political points.

“It’s been the most stressful period of my life,” she said.

She filed a police report and starting reaching out for help. She had heard about the cross-country lawsuit, so she got in touch with M.L.’s mom and other parents of LGBTQ+ kids at the school. Together, they linked up with local LGBTQ+ activists — essentially calling in their own backup.

Among those who responded was Toi Thibodeaux, director of the Inland Empire LGBTQ+ Center, who said she and other queer leaders have watched as anti-transgender activists from outside the region have begun showing up at school board meetings throughout the county.

“We know that those agitators are going to be here, so we’re just organizing to make sure that we are there, and we are speaking, and we are getting those slots to give public comments,” Thibodeaux said. “We’re staying for five hours to make sure that we can speak.”

Lance Preston, executive director of the Rainbow Youth Project, which provides suicide prevention hotlines and on-the-ground support to LGBTQ+ kids in public spotlights, said such community support is incredibly important, especially as his group has documented “a drastic increase in physical assaults against these kids all across the country.”

S.M.’s mother said she wished people would show a bit of compassion — and check the vitriol.

“These are kids, just like theirs,” she said, choking up. “They would not want their kids attacked or singled out.”

Looking ahead

On Tuesday, California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta vowed to defend state educators and LGBTQ+ students against Trump’s threats. He said California laws protecting transgender students remain intact, and that his office will go to court to defend them if necessary.

The Riverside Unified School District has said it doesn’t make the laws in the state but intends to comply with them. The California Interscholastic Federation, which governs high school sports in the state, has said similar.

But on Thursday, the NCAA, which governs college sports, announced that, pursuant to Trump’s order the previous day, it had updated its policies to bar transgender girls and women from competing in women’s collegiate sports. That night, the Riverside Unified school board met once more.

Limiting transgender students’ participation in sports was once again discussed, as was a “parental notification” policy that would require Riverside schools to share information about a child’s gender presentation with their parents even if the child requested privacy — which California law generally precludes.

Among those championing both policies was board member Amanda Vickers.

While anticipating correctly that her fellow board members would not advance the parental notification policy, Vickers said she hoped that “President Trump’s rules do come in and assist us.” And she said his executive order on transgender athletes “does instruct us to promptly apply” its rules, and that she was “excited to see how our district will do that to protect the rights of our female students.”

S.M. was not in attendance. A few weeks ago, she decided to quit the track and field team, and she is trying to move on. “It’s just not worth it.”

While she feels “kind of angry” about how everything played out, she’s trying to stay positive about pursuing other hobbies such as cooking, going to concerts, and traveling, she said. Having things to look forward to — Coachella in April — “really helps me, especially in these times,” she said.

M.L., on the other hand, plans to run hurdles this season — “I’m going to compete no matter what they say,” she said. And she twice stood to speak at Thursday night’s board meeting.

She called the proposed “parental notification” policy illegal in California and harmful to students. And she urged the board to “stand strong” behind her and other transgender athletes, especially given the mounting pressure against them.

“Throughout the day, every single day, I face discriminatory language and hate speech. Every single passing period during school, just for me walking around, I hear people cursing at me and calling me names. This also has applied to many other students,” she said.

“These attacks started not when I started competing, but rather when these protests started.”

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On the first day of the California Legislature’s new session, Assemblymember Kate Sanchez, an Orange County Republican, introduced a bill that would ban transgender high school students from competing on girls’ sports teams.

“Young women who have spent years training, sacrificing and earning their place to compete at the highest level are now being forced to compete against individuals with undeniable biological advantages,” Sanchez, of Rancho Santa Margarita, said in a video posted to social media.

“It’s not just unfair,” she added. “It’s disheartening and dangerous.”

Sanchez’s proposed law, called the Protect Girls’ Sports Act, is almost certain to fail in a Legislature controlled by a Democratic supermajority with a record of embracing inclusion for LGBTQ+ Californians.

But her introduction of it — notably, as her first bill of the session — underscores the persistent Republican emphasis on transgender issues, which continue to shape policy debates in California, where Democratic leaders have cast the state as a bulwark against President-elect Donald Trump, whose opposition to trans rights was central to his campaign.

Sacramento Democrats have blasted Sanchez’s bill as a political stunt, saying it is an unnecessary attack against transgender youth, who make up a tiny portion of California’s school-age population.

Assemblymember Chris Ward, chair of the California Legislative LGBTQ Caucus, said in a statement that the caucus, whose members are all Democrats, “will not stand by as anyone attempts to use kids as political pawns.”

“Attacking kids is a failed 2024 issue,” said Ward (D-San Diego). “We are surprised the Assembly member introduced her first bill targeting a very small, vulnerable population of kids rather than using the opportunity to address key issues of affordability, housing and more that are impacting Californians.”

The Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law, which researches public policy around sexual orientation and gender identity, estimates that about 1.4% of American teenagers ages 13-17 — about 300,000 individuals nationwide — identify as transgender. Fewer play sports.

While polls show that most Americans support protecting LGBTQ+ people from discrimination, they are deeply divided on issues involving queer children, especially kids who identify as transgender or nonbinary.

In a nationwide poll conducted last year for The Times by NORC at the University of Chicago, about two-third of adult respondents said transgender girls and women should never or only rarely be allowed to participate on female sports teams.

“Regardless of where Sacramento Democrats are on this issue, they’ll need to face facts,” Sanchez said in a statement to The Times, noting public opinion on the issue.

On the other side of the political aisle, state Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) last week introduced the Transgender Privacy Act, which would automatically seal all court records related to a person’s gender transition in an effort to protect them from being outed or harassed.

“The incoming Trump Administration and Republican Congressional leadership have made clear that targeting and erasing trans people is among their highest policy priorities, and California must have our trans community members’ backs,” Wiener said in a statement about his Senate Bill 59.

Sanchez’s Assembly Bill 89, would require the California Interscholastic Federation, which regulates high school sports for public and private schools, to enact rules prohibiting any “pupil whose sex was assigned male at birth from participating on a girls’ interscholastic sports team.” It does not stop transgender boys from playing on boys’ teams or specify how the CIF would verify students’ gender.

California education code explicitly says students must be allowed to participate in sex-segregated school programs and activities, including team sports, and must be permitted to use restrooms and locker rooms consistent with their gender identity. Then-Gov. Jerry Brown signed those rights into law in 2013.

Sanchez’s bill comes after several recent high-profile fights across California over trans girls and women playing high school and college sports.

In November, a Christian high school in Merced withdrew its girls’ volleyball team from a state playoff match against a San Francisco team with a transgender player.

This fall, the San José State women’s volleyball team was embroiled in controversy after current and former players and an associate coach tried to have a trans player removed from the roster by filing a federal lawsuit. A judge later ruled the player could compete.

In November, two female high school students sued the Riverside Unified School District, alleging a transgender girl unfairly ousted one of them from a spot on the varsity cross-country team. The federal lawsuit also claims that when the girls protested the situation — by wearing T-shirts that read, “Save Girls Sports,” and, “It’s common sense. XX [does not equal] XY” — school officials compared it to wearing a swastika in front of a Jewish student.

The suit claims that the district’s policies unfairly restrict the girls’ freedom of expression and deny them fair and equal access to athletic opportunities.

Two Republican Assembly members from the Inland Empire, Bill Essayli and Leticia Castillo, called on the district’s superintendent to resign over her handling of the issue.

In 2023, Essayli, whose district borders Sanchez’s, co-sponsored a bill that would have required school employees to notify parents if their child identified as transgender at school. Critics argued the bill would out and potentially endanger trans kids, while violating student privacy protections under California law. The bill died in committee, but similar policies sprouted up on school boards in conservative parts of the state, showing how a Republican idea that gets squelched in the state Capitol can still drive debate on an issue.

In July, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law Assembly Bill 1955, which prohibits schools from mandating that teachers notify families about student gender identity changes.

Daisy Gardner, an outreach director for Our Schools USA, a nonprofit that supported AB 1955, called Sanchez’s bill and Republicans’ focus on transgender athletes “a very powerful organizing tool from the far right.”

The parent of an LGBTQ+ student who said she was speaking for herself, not on behalf of Our Schools USA, Gardner called Sanchez’s bill “a media stunt designed to whip up fear and hatred of trans people so that the far right can flip California red in 2026, and the casualties are trans lives.”

Gardner has been in contact with parents of two transgender high school athletes in the Riverside Unified School District amid the recent controversy and read a statement on behalf of one of the girl’s family during a raucous school board meeting last month.

“They are in pure hell,” she said of the parents. “They don’t know how to protect their kids.”

Matt Rexroad, a longtime California political consultant, said that while urban Democrats might be scratching their heads over Sanchez introducing this long shot bill on such a hot-button issue, it makes sense for her suburban district, which is “one of the more conservative areas of California.”

“It’s a good political issue for certain parts of California,” Rexroad said. “Clearly, Scott Wiener is not going to introduce this bill or vote for it, but not all of his bills pass either.”

Sanchez, he said, “is representing the views of her constituents.”

At least one of her constituents, though, was so angry about the Protect Girls’ Sports Act that she called Sanchez’s office and grilled a staffer about the specifics, like how a child’s gender would be verified.

Michele McNutt, a former Democrat who just changed her party registration to no-party-preference, said she was not satisfied with the staffer’s answers and called the bill “performative.”

“If it fails, they can frame it as, ‘California hates parents,’” said McNutt, whose two teenage daughters are student athletes in the Capistrano Unified School District. “I think the theater is the point, and it really isn’t about protecting girls’ sports.”

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Congressional Republicans were on the same page; on Tuesday they passed a bill to ban transgender athletes from women’s sports at the elementary through college level, which would jeopardize federal funding for schools that don’t comply.

Sanchez says her bill and other legislation like it would assure a safe, fair playing field for girls.  

“There is a definite difference between biological boys and females in sports, especially at this age,” said Sanchez, a Rancho Santa Margarita Republican who represents Temecula and Murrieta. “This is the intent of the bill, to protect the integrity and fairness of girls’ sports.”

Civil rights and LGBTQ advocates argue that the bill would turn civil rights protections against vulnerable students. Kel O’Hara, an attorney with Equal Rights Advocates, a San Francisco-based gender justice organization, said more than half the states have passed restrictions on transgender students’ participation in sports. Those bills target “a problem that doesn’t exist,” they said.

Sanchez’s bill likely faces steep odds in the California Legislature, which is dominated by Democrats who often vote to the left of Congress. “It strikes me as exceptionally unlikely that such a bill would pass” in California, said Morgan Polikoff, a University of Southern California education professor, said in an email.

California in recent years has passed legislation supporting trans students and athletes, including several measures that protect people from discrimination regardless of gender status.

About 3.3% of high school students identified as transgender in 2023, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Only a small number of students of any gender are elite athletes.

“It’s a dog whistle from our perspective,” O’Hara said. “There’s no evidence that trans students, particularly trans girls, are dominating girls’ sports.”

Sanchez pointed to a lawsuit that two female students in Riverside Unified School District filed in November, alleging that a trans girl had displaced them from the cross-country team. The lawsuit argued that the transgender teammate received a top spot in competitions because of faster times, knocking the plaintiffs out of key parts of a cross-country meet. Sanchez said that’s evidence that transgender girls hold an edge over their teammates.

“I think when you look at it from the perspective and lens of biology, males have a very clear and undeniable advantage, so that plays into part of the legislation we’re trying to advance now,” she said.

O’Hara disputed that transgender girls outperform their teammates. They said that benefits of high school sports extend beyond athletic competition, so trans girls who are banned from teams also lose opportunities to develop teamwork, leadership skills and a sense of community.

“These bills try to convince queer and trans young people that they don’t belong and they’re not safe,” they said. “They want students to give up hope and go home.” 

Pushback against transgender rights, particularly in schools, has become a conservative call to arms. More than a dozen red states have sued the Biden administration over changes to the federal education rights law, Title IX, which extended its discrimination protections to LGBTQ students. On Thursday a federal judge in Kentucky ruled in the states’ favor, striking down the new rules.

In the fall, several college teams garnered national attention when they forfeited their games against a San José  State University women’s volleyball team because of its transgender athlete.

President-elect Donald Trump suggested at campaign rallies that he would “keep men out of women’s sports” using executive power to implement a ban.

Sanchez thinks the American public is moving in that direction. She pointed to a 2023 Gallup poll showing that 69% of Americans think transgender athletes should not be allowed to play on teams that match their gender identity, up 7 percentage points from Americans’ views on the matter in 2021. 

Not surprisingly, opinions varied along party lines. The poll found 86% of Republicans opposed  transgender athletes playing on teams aligned with their identity, while Democrats were split nearly evenly.  

About 40% of voters in Sanchez’ district are Republican, 30% Democratic, with the rest registered with third parties or citing no party preference. Sanchez said her office has received calls in support of the bill.

Last year Sanchez passed other successful education bills, including one to protect student athletes from severe heat conditions and another to make epinephrine injectors available at schools. Both passed with nearly unanimous bipartisan support.

This bill will likely be different. Assemblymember Chris Ward, a San Diego Democrat and chair of the Legislative LGBTQ Caucus, said members “will not stand by as anyone attempts to use kids as political pawns.

“Participating in sports leads to better outcomes in academics and mental health,” he said in a statement, “and transgender kids — like any student — deserve the chance to benefit from all that sports have to offer, in an environment that both affirms and validates their gender identity.”

Carl DeMaio, a freshman Republican Assembly member from San Diego, said he’s co-sponsoring the bill, which he thinks maintains “dignity, respect and fairness” for all players. DeMaio, who is gay, said other members of the LGBTQ community have told him they don’t believe transgender females should compete on girls’ teams, and he compared the policy to the use of performance-enhancing drugs. 

“If you allow biological males to compete in girls’ sports, you are not maintaining fairness and you are robbing these girls of their dreams,” DeMaio said. 

Sanchez said she’s committed to her legislation and expects that it will align with upcoming federal policies on transgender rights, including Tuesday’s House bill.

O’Hara argued that protecting female athletes doesn’t have to come at the expense of transgender girls.

“Why does protecting some students have to mean discriminating against others?” they asked. “Why are we approaching civil rights laws as a zero-sum game?”

The post New California bill would block trans females from playing in girls’ sports appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

The Riverside Unified School District has become the latest battleground over transgender athletes’ participation in sports after two female students filed a lawsuit this week alleging that a trans girl had ousted them from coveted spots on the cross-country team.

The suit, filed Wednesday in federal court in Los Angeles, also claims that when the girls protested what they perceived as the unfairness of the situation by wearing T-shirts that said “Save Girls’ Sports,” school officials compared it to wearing a swastika in front of a Jewish student.

The suit claims that the district’s policies and practices “unfairly restrict” the girls’ “freedom of expression and deny them fair and equal access to athletic opportunities.” The suit was filed on behalf of two girls and their parents by Advocates for Faith & Freedom, which describes itself as “a nonprofit legal ministry dedicated to protecting religious liberty in the courts.”

Riverside County officials could not be reached Saturday for comment, but in a statement published by the San Francisco Chronicle, district spokesperson Liz Pinney-Muglia said that “California state law prohibits discrimination of students based on gender, gender identity and gender expression, and specifically prohibits discrimination on the basis of gender in physical education and athletics.” Her statement added: “The protections we provide to all students are not only aligned with the law but also with our core values, which include equity and well-being.”

That sentiment did not satisfy crowds of people who showed up Thursday at the Riverside Unified School Board meeting to complain — with some vowing to return, with even more protesters, in coming weeks.

“I’m here today to put you on notice,” parent Jose Carillo told the board. “After today, there will be advocates here at every school board meeting … There’s going to be a lot more of us. It’s going to be standing-room only.”

He added that board members should heed the election results that returned Donald Trump to the White House. “This election woke people up,” he said.

School board members did not directly address the issue because it was not formally on the agenda.

The fight in Riverside is one of a series of battles raging across California over trans women in sports. The California Interscholastic Federation, which governs most high school sports in California, permits transgender athletes to join teams based on their gender identity. Many parents and students object to that policy. A Christian high school from Merced, for example, this month forfeited a volleyball match rather than play against a private school in San Francisco that had a trans student on the team, according to the San Jose Mercury News. At the college level, a former player and an assistant coach at San Jose State filed a lawsuit to try to ban a trans player from playing in a championship game.

The lawsuit against Riverside Unified describes a conflict over trans athletes that erupted after coaches made their selections for which runners would participate in a high-profile cross-country meet earlier this fall.

One student, known in court papers as T.S., is an 11th-grader so dedicated to running that she had taken a course in summer school so as to free up her schedule in the fall for more time to train. She was also a team captain, and had won a coveted spot at the Mt. SAC Invitational, one of the most important high school cross-country events in California.

Then, a trans girl, known in court papers as M.L., transferred to their school.

According to the lawsuit, M.L. did not train for as many hours with the team, and did not show up to all required events. And yet, M.L., who posted faster times, was given a top spot, and T.S. was knocked out of the “Team Sweepstakes” portion of the Mt. SAC meet. T.S., the lawsuit said, thus “missed opportunities to compete at a high-profile meet, losing valuable chances for college recruitment and recognition.”

The other plaintiff in the lawsuit is on the junior varsity team, but as a top runner there, could be in contention for a varsity spot should any of the varsity runners fall ill or get injured.

Both students alleged that the presence of the trans athlete on their team deprived them of opportunities.

They decided to stage a protest at the Mt. SAC meet, according to the lawsuit. Along with more than a dozen other parents and grandparents, they showed up at the event sporting blue T-shirts that said “Save Girls’ Sports” on the front and on the back: “It’s Common Sense. XX [does not equal] XY.”

The lawsuit says that the two students who wore the shirts are religious Christians, and that the shirts were “intended to express their religious viewpoint and to advocate for the protection of fair competition for girls based on biological sex.”

They also claim that “the messages on the shirts were not directed toward any teammate or student or individual.”

Nevertheless, when they wore them to a cross-country practice on Nov. 1, the school’s athletic director told them the shirts created a hostile environment and told them they had to remove them or cover them.

The lawsuit asks the court to declare that the school district’s action restriction the students’ speech on their T-shirts is unconstitutional. It also wants the court to rule that the school district failed to provide equal treatment for girls in sport, a violation of Title IX, and it seeks monetary damages.

The school district has yet to respond in court to the filing.

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