California violated civil rights of female students by allowing trans athletes to compete, feds say

The U.S. Department of Education announced Wednesday that California and the California Interscholastic Federation violated the civil rights of female students on the basis of sex by allowing transgender athletes to compete in school sports according to their gender identity.

Having concluded its investigation, the Trump administration is calling on California to “voluntarily agree” to change what it determined are “unlawful practices” within 10 days or risk “imminent enforcement action.”

“Although Governor Gavin Newsom admitted months ago it was ‘deeply unfair’ to allow men to compete in women’s sports, both the California Department of Education and the California Interscholastic Federation continued as recently as a few weeks ago to allow men to steal female athletes’ well-deserved accolades and to subject them to the indignity of unfair and unsafe competitions,” U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said in a statement.

“The Trump Administration will relentlessly enforce Title IX protections for women and girls, and our findings today make clear that California has failed to adhere to its obligations under federal law. The state must swiftly come into compliance with Title IX or face the consequences that follow.”

California Department of Education spokesperson Liz Sanders said in a statement that the state education office “believes all students should have the opportunity to learn and play at school, and we have consistently applied existing law in support of students’ rights to do so.”

It was not clear Wednesday how the state would reply to the findings or exactly how much federal education funding is at stake.

In an email, CIF spokesperson Rebecca Brutlag said the organization “does not comment on legal matters.”

California

Justice Department investigates California over allowing transgender athletes in girls’ sports

The probe will look into whether California is violating the civil rights of cisgender girls by allowing transgender students to compete in school sports.

May 28, 2025

Triston Ezidore, the Culver City Unified school board president, said the department’s finding “does not protect women and girls — it harms them.”

“Barring transgender students from participating in sports based on the president of the United States deciding who is ‘woman enough’ is both discriminatory and unjust. True protection for female athletes means fighting for fairness and inclusion, not using exclusionary definitions to marginalize vulnerable students,” he said in an interview with The Times.

“It forces school staff to police and enforce a politically motivated definition of womanhood, turning our schools into gatekeepers of identity rather than safe spaces for learning and growth,” Ezidore said.

Chino Valley Unified school board President Sonja Shaw, a Trump supporter running for state schools superintendent who has challenged pro-LGBTQ+ laws, hailed the department’s finding as a “step towards justice.”

“CIF and CDE were warned. Over and over,” she said. “But instead of listening, they laughed. They smirked. They mocked parents and anyone that stood for the truth and let our daughters be mocked, sidelined and erased. They handed girls over to an ideology that stole their privacy, safety, and achievements. Now, they’ve been federally exposed as lawbreakers.”

Months long federal investigation

The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights opened an investigation in February into the CIF, which oversees sports at more than 1,500 high schools, after the athletic group continued its policy of allowing transgender students to compete in accordance with their gender identity.

From the outset of the investigation, it was almost inevitable that the Department of Education, under Trump, would reach the conclusion that California was violating the rights of female athletes. On the first day of his term, Trump signed an executive order that recognized two sexes, male and female, a dictum that has moved across all departments under his jurisdiction.

Although the administration has slashed Office of Civil Rights staffing, limiting its ability to handle complex or nuanced investigations, California and federal officials clearly viewed civil rights for transgender students through a different lens, with clashing interpretations of what is legal under federal law and whether ‘sex’ under federal Title IX law refers simply to biological sex or includes gender identity.

Title IX of the Education Amendments, a 1972 federal law, prohibits discrimination “on the basis of sex” in educational programs that receive federal funding.

The Trump administration has targeted California’s education code, which states that students “shall be permitted to participate in sex-segregated school programs and activities, including athletic teams and competitions, and use facilities consistent with his or her gender identity, irrespective of the gender listed on the pupil’s records.

In May, the U.S. Department of Justice began an investigation into whether California, its interscholastic sports federation and the Jurupa Unified School District were violating the civil rights of female students by allowing transgender students to compete in school sports.

Trump made the participation of transgender athletes in women’s sports a key plank of his 2024 election campaign. But while Republicans tend to have been the loudest voices against transgender athletes performing in women’s sports, polling suggests slim support for such participation among Democrats.

Nearly 7 in 10 Democratic or Democratic-leaning adults oppose allowing transgender athletes to participate in women’s sports, according to a January New York Times/Ipsos poll.

This year, Newsom, a potential 2028 Democratic presidential candidate, broke away from many Democratic activists on the issue. In a March conversation on his new podcast with right-wing activist Charlie Kirk, the founder and president of Turning Point USA, a national student movement dedicated to rallying young people around conservative principles of free markets and limited government, Newsom said he “completely” agreed with Kirk on the participation of transgender athletes in women’s sport.

“It is an issue of fairness,” he said. “It’s deeply unfair.”

How the CIF has reacted

In an attempt to address the issue of female 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.

The Trump administration has not publicly acknowledged the CIF change — and Wednesday’s announcement makes clear that it does not go far enough for the federal government.

What the feds are demanding

Under the Department of Education’s proposed “Resolution Agreement,” California must send a notice to all recipients of federal funding that operate interscholastic athletic programs that they must comply with the 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 federal department also requires:

• The California Department of Education mustadvise recipients of federal funding that any interpretation of California state law conflicting with the administration’s notice is preempted by federal law under Title IX.
• The state and CIF must rescind any guidance that advised local school districts or CIF members to “permit male athletes to participate in women’s and girls’ sports.”
• The CIF and other bodies must restore all “individual records, titles, and awards” to female athletes that were “misappropriated by male athletes competing in female competitions” — a process that could strip transgender athletes of awards and prizes.

The announcement does not state what the penalty would be. Asked for more information on “consequences” California would face for not complying with the federal demands, an Education Department spokesperson referred The Times to McMahon’s Wednesday appearance on “Fox and Friends.”

In the Fox interview, McMahon said California runs “the risk of losing their federal funding, you know, in their K-12 schools” if it does not, among other actions, “send a letter of apology to all of the participants, female participants in sports” and “return the titles that were taken away from these women who competed and lost to a male in the sports.”

Asked how much funding was on the line, McMahon said, “I’d have to look at that to be exact because they’re different levels of it, but it could be a substantial amount of money that would come into California.”

Potential Trump moves

President Trump has stated that any and all federal funds could be at stake when his executive orders are not followed. However, in Trump’s first and current administrations, courts have, so far, consistently barred sweeping penalties that go beyond the topic at hand. For example, they have not allowed him to bar all federal funding to punish jurisdictions that adopt a sanctuary stance toward immigrants.

In this case, it is not clear how far the Trump administration would go in trying to cut education funds. But if it did try to take sweeping actions, such as cutting federally funded early education Head Start programs or school lunch programs that serve the children of low-income families, it is almost certain that California would challenge such actions in court.

Trump threatened last month to cut federal funding to California if the state continued to allow transgender athletes to compete.

Railing against Newsom on Truth Social, Trump complained the state “continues to ILLEGALLY allow MEN TO PLAY IN WOMEN’S SPORTS.”

“I will speak to him today to find out which way he wants to go???” Trump said of Newsom. “In the meantime I am ordering local authorities, if necessary, to not allow the transitioned person to compete in the State Finals. This is a totally ridiculous situation!!!”

This month, the U.S. Department of Justice continued to ramp up the pressure on schools, warning school districts June 2nd that they faced ‘legal liability’ if they did not bar such athletes from competition.

The next day, however, California Supt. of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond sent out a letter, saying that the federal warning carried no legal weight. School districts, he said, were still obligated to comply with state law allowing transgender youth to compete.

“The DOJ assertions are not in themselves law, and the letter by itself, cannot be an enforcement mechanism,” Thurmond wrote to school districts. “The letter does not announce the passage of any new federal law.”

Thurmond noted that California law that “protects students from discrimination based on gender identity, and... requires that students be permitted to participate on athletic teams that are consistent with their gender identity” has remained unchanged since 2013.

“Contrary to the DOJ letter,” Thurmond wrote, “the Equal Protection Clause does not require that athletic teams be segregated by “biological sex.”