The state of California, led by Gavin Newsom, has filed a lawsuit against the United States Department of Justice after officials demanded the state’s public schools bar trans girls from competing in female sports.
The lawsuit, filed by California’s attorney general Rob Bonta, comes after a letter was sent by the Department of Justice’s assistant attorney general for the Civil Rights Division, Harmeet Dhillon, to California’s public-school districts and the California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) last week, claiming trans inclusion policies are “unconstitutional” and demanding they are halted in the state.
That letter itself came after trans student AB Hernandez, a 16-year-old junior at Jurupa Valley High School, about 50 miles from Los Angeles, became the centre of widespread Conservative ire for her participation in a state track and field competition.
AB Hernandez’s involvement saw direct attacks from president Donald Trump on his Truth Social platform, in which he labelled the teenager’s participation “not fair and totally demeaning to women and girls” and threatened to withhold “large-scale” funding from Californian schools.
The CIF announced a “pilot entry process” allowing “any biological female” student athlete who “would have” qualified for the finals – had Hernandez not beat them – to compete in the championships in response to Henandez’s participation, but this did not go far enough for Republicans.
In the letter, Dhillon said the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment “prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex” and “knowingly depriving female students of athletic opportunities and benefits on the basis of their sex would constitute unconstitutional sex discrimination under the Equal Protection Clause”.
“Scientific evidence shows that upsetting the historical status quo and forcing girls to compete against males would deprive them of athletic opportunities and benefits because of their sex,” Dhillon continued.
“Therefore, you cannot implement a policy allowing males to compete alongside girls, because such a policy would deprive girls of athletic opportunities and benefits based solely on their biological sex, in violation of the Equal Protection Clause.”
Dhillon demanded schools and the CIF “certify in writing” they would comply with the ban on trans athletes by 5pm Monday (9 June).
In response, the Californian lawsuit states the Trump administration has “no right to make such a demand” and the government “cite no authority which would allow them to issue or enforce the Certification Demand Letter”.
The lawsuit goes on to state that Californian bylaws “do not classify or discriminate based on ’biological sex,’ do not require schools to ‘depriv[e] [cisgender] female students of athletic opportunities and benefits on the basis of their sex,’ and do not effectuate any differential treatment on the basis of sex”.
“Instead,” the legal document continues, “allowing athletic participation consistent with students’ gender identity is substantially related to the important government interests of affording all students the benefits of an inclusive school environment, including participation in school sports, and preventing the serious harms that transgender students would suffer from a discriminatory, exclusionary policy.”
It adds the Trump administration’s demands would force public schools to violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment as well as California’s antidiscrimination laws because whilst the government “believe that compliance with the Equal Protection Clause requires the categorical exclusion of transgender girls from girls’ sports – but the Equal Protection Clause in fact forbids such policies of total exclusion, as does California law”.
“By threatening [Californian schools] with baseless legal action if they refuse to agree to [the Trump administration’s] unlawful demands, Defendants create an imminent risk of irreparable harm to California’s proprietary, sovereign, and quasi-sovereign interests,” it adds.
As part of the lawsuit, the state requested the court implement an injunction from the demand letter.
“The President and his Administration are demanding that California school districts break the law and violate the Constitution – or face legal retaliation,” Bonta said in a statement issued as part of the lawsuit. “They’re demanding that our schools discriminate against the students in their care and deny their constitutionally protected rights.
“As we’ve proven time and again in court, just because the President disagrees with a law, that doesn’t make it any less of one.
“As California’s chief legal officer, I’ll always fight to uphold and defend the laws of our state, especially those that protect and ensure the civil rights of the most vulnerable among us.”
Prior to the CIF’s rule change, lawmakers in California rejected two anti-trans bills which sought to keep transgender athletes out of sports. 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.
Following the rule change, a spokesperson for California’s governor Gavin Newsom said on his behalf that the decision was a “reasonable, respectful way to navigate a complex issue without compromising competitive fairness”.
Gavin Newsom’s trans U-turn criticised
Gavin Newsom, who has a strong record on queer rights, was criticised in March for making a huge U-turn on transgender athletes and trans inclusion in sport in the first episode of the This is Gavin Newsom podcast.
“I think it’s an issue of fairness, I completely agree with you on that. It is an issue of fairness — it’s deeply unfair,” Gavin Newsom said of trans inclusion in sport to Turning Point USA co-founder and notable MAGA figure Charlie Kirk during the podcast.
The Trump administration’s attempt to crackdown on trans inclusion on Californian schools comes as part of the GOP’s wider attacks on the rights of transgender Americans.
In Feburary, Trump signed an executive order, entitled ‘Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports’, aimed at banning trans women from competing in female sports and declaring federal funding would be pulled from educational institutions that did not designate sports based on “biological sex”.
The order said the “policy of the United States [was] 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 received federal funds “cannot deny women an equal opportunity to participate in sports”.
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