California has changed its rules on the number of girls eligible to compete in track-and-field championships after the participation of a trans athlete drew a threat of funding cuts from Donald Trump.
Trump took to his social media platform Truth Social on Tuesday (27 May) to issue a scathing attack on 16-year-old trans high school junior AB Hernandez, who was set to compete in the girls’ varsity triple jump, high jump and long jump in the state finals this coming weekend.
Trump described Hernandez’s participation as “not fair and totally demeaning to women and girls”. He threatened to hold back “large-scale” funding from Californian schools if the state refused to comply with his executive order that set out to ban trans women from female sports.
Signed in February, the directive, Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports, declared that it was the “policy of the United States to oppose male competitive participation in women’s sports more broadly, as a matter of safety, fairness, dignity and truth”.
It also said that under Title IX, a landmark piece of civil rights legislation which protects people from sex-based discrimination, schools and other educational institutions which receive federal funds “cannot deny women an equal opportunity to participate in sports”.
Following Trump’s threats, the California Interscholastic Federation (CIF), which governs high school sports in The Golden State, announced a “pilot entry process” whereby “any biological female” student athlete who “would have” qualified for the finals – had Hernandez not beat them – is eligible to compete in the championships.
“The CIF believes this process achieves the participation opportunities we seek to afford our student-athletes,” a federation spokesperson said.
At the conclusion of the CIF Section’s Track and Field qualifying meets this past weekend, the CIF made the decision to pilot an entry process for the upcoming 2025 CIF State Track and Field Championships. Please see the following statement: pic.twitter.com/qOjWl6eybR
— CIF State (@CIFState) May 27, 2025
The change comes a month after two anti-trans bills, which aimed to keep transgender athletes out of sports, were blocked by state legislators. AB-844 and AB-89 would have required participation in sex-segregated California school programmes, athletic teams and facilities, to be based on a pupil’s “biological sex” not their gender.
In response to the altered rule, Izzy Gardon, California governor Gavin Newsom’s director of communications, said the decision was a “reasonable, respectful way to navigate a complex issue without compromising competitive fairness”.
Newsom, who has been governor since 2019 and has a strong record on queer rights – including signing protections for LGBTQ+ youth into law and calling out Florida governor Ron DeSantis for “demeaning” the trans community – courted controversy in March for a U-turn on transgender athletes and trans inclusion in sport.
He made the unexpected comments in the first episode of the This is Gavin Newsom podcast, where he spoke to hard-line right-wing pundit Charlie Kirk, the co-founder of the staunchly conservative education advocacy group Turning Point USA.
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