California Department of Education officials on Monday refused to comply with a Trump administration demand to bar transgender athletes from girls’ and women’s sports, in response to a July 7 deadline following a federal civil rights investigation.
State officials formally rejected the conclusions of the Office for Civil Rights investigation, which that determined late last month that California violated the rights of female students by allowing transgender athletes to compete in sports according to their gender identity. Federal officials gave the state 10 days to comply with their order and agree to a proposed resolution.
“The California Department of Education … respectfully disagrees with OCR’s analysis and it will not sign the proposed resolution agreement,” wrote Len Garfinkel, general counsel for the California agency in a brief communication.
Failure to comply exposes California to unspecified “imminent enforcement action,” in the words of federal demands issued June 25.
Education Secretary Linda McMahon commented on the California rejection in a social media post Monday.
“California has just REJECTED our resolution agreement to follow federal law and keep men out of women’s sports,” McMahon wrote at 12:08 PM. “Turns out Gov. Newsom’s acknowledgment that ‘it’s an issue of fairness’ was empty political grandstanding. @CAgovernor, you’ll be hearing from @AGPamBondi,” she added, referring to Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi.
McMahon’s post alluded to comments from Gov. Gavin Newsom, who has shown some sympathy toward those who object to transgender girls competing in sports against cisgender girls, calling it an issue of fairness.
President Trump has repeatedly threatened to withhold federal funding from California, and in several instances his appointees have acted to do so over various issues, including the existence of state programs to promote racial diversity and the refusal of state and local officials to cooperate with immigration agents seeking to take unauthorized immigrants into custody.
Legal challenges to these actions, including more than two dozen lawsuits involving California are ongoing. In some cases, the Trump administration has successfully held back or canceled certain funds. In other instances, judges have blocked the administration or ordered a restoration of dollars.
In this confrontation, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights opened an investigation in February into the California Interscholastic Federation or CIF, which oversees sports at more than 1,500 high schools, after the organization continued its policy of allowing transgender students to compete in accordance with their gender identity.
That investigation was later expanded to include the California Department of Education and local school districts.
In late June, the Trump administration called on California to “voluntarily agree” to change what it determined are “unlawful practices” within 10 days.
Under the proposed resolution agreement, California would have to notify all recipients of federal funding that operate interscholastic athletic programs that they must comply with the Trump administration’s interpretation of Title IX.
The notice, it states, must specify that “Title IX and its implementing regulations forbids schools from allowing males from participating in female sports and from occupying female intimate facilities” and that recipients of federal funding “must adopt biology-based definitions of the words ‘male’ and ‘female.’ ”
The CIF on Monday sent a separate response also rejecting the federal demands.
California and federal officials view civil rights for transgender students through different lenses, with clashing interpretations of what is legal under federal law, commonly called Title IX, which bars discrimination based on sex.
Transgender athlete supporters hold up signs at left as others show off their “Save Girls Sports” shirts outside the Riverside Unified School District to debate the rights of transgender athletes in December.
(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)
Defenders of LGBTQ+ rights say that Title IX protections should be extended to gender identity to include transgender girls.
Nearly two dozen states, including California, have laws that allow transgender students to participate in sports according to their gender identity. Other states have banned such participation.
In an attempt to address the issue of athletes losing out on awards, the CIF moved forward May 27 with a plan that duplicates the awards when a transgender athlete wins a competition.
Under the new process, an athlete who would have won the award receives the same recognition that she would have if the trans athlete had not competed. This practice was applied to the state competition in which AB Hernandez, a 16-year-old transgender junior from Jurupa Valley High School, won multiple medals at the state high school track and field championships.
But the new CIF policy does not address team sports, where it’s more difficult to assess the impact of an individual trans athlete. Nor was the policy applied retroactively to rewrite the results of past competitions.
