Debate over trans athletes intensifies at Yorba Linda track meet

A Division 3 high school track meet in Yorba Linda hosted one of the most recent flashpoints between people who say allowing trans athletes to compete in girls’ sports is unfair and unsafe, and families who say they’ve been targeted with threats of violence as part of a politically driven bullying campaign.

Organizations on each side of the debate held competing news conferences Saturday, May 9, during the California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) Southern Section Track & Field Preliminaries. AB Hernandez, a 17-year-old volleyball player and jumper for Jurupa Valley High School who identifies as trans-feminine, earned first place that day in triple jump, long jump and, in a five-way tie with four other athletes, high jump.

Members of the “Save Girls’ Sports” campaign claim trans athletes like Hernandez have an unfair advantage over those who were born female. They say allowing them to compete against each other in girls’ divisions ultimately robs cisgendered students of medals, scholarships and limited spots on teams.

“What is happening is unfair to female athletes, unfair to parents and unfair to every girl who has worked hard for the chance to compete on a level playing field,” conservative commentator Steve Hilton, who is running for California governor, wrote in a statement.

Riverside County Sheriff and gubernatorial candidate Chad Bianco expressed similar sentiments that were also read at Saturday’s rally in lieu of scheduled appearances.

CIF pilot policy

The National Collegiate Athletic Assn. (NCAA) does not permit people who were assigned male at birth to participate on women’s teams. That renders athletes like Hernandez ineligible for sports scholarships.

At the high school level, CIF officials implemented a pilot policy ahead of last year’s track and field championships in Clovis, where Hernandez won first in the high jump and triple jump. Under the new rules, trans athletes who earn first, second or third place in events cannot displace cisgendered ones for rank.

That means trans athletes share the podium and medals with those who place directly behind them. And in situations where a trans athlete would prevent a cisgendered one from advancing to a higher level of competition, from semifinals to finals, for example, an extra spot will be added to the event to allow the latter to move forward.

Some like Abigail Jones, a former member of the girls’ hurdling team at Martin Luther King High School in Riverside who identifies as trans, say the pilot policy marginalizes the achievements of trans athletes.

Members of the “Save Girls’ Sports” campaign say those measures don’t level the playing field. They want the CIF to bar trans-feminine students from girls’ division competitions.

“Males have biological advantages that, unfortunately, females cannot surpass, giving easy wins to transgender athletes,” said Lesley Ledesma, a runner for Esperanza High School in Anaheim who spoke during the May 9 rally.

A representative for the CIF declined to provide comment for this story, citing pending litigation.

‘This is really all I do’

Hernandez said earning gold was anything but easy. She trains two to three hours a day. And when she isn’t studying, practicing on the field or pushing herself in the gym she’s strategizing and researching ways to become a better jumper.

“This is really all I do,” Hernandez told TimesOC during a telephone interview Wednesday. “I try to finish my assignments during class so I have a free mind after practice to just watch [training] videos, see what I need to fix to get better.”

AB Hernandez competes in the CIF Division III prelims at Yorba Linda High on Saturday, May 2.

(Eric Licas)

Hernandez puts in at least as much work as any cisgendered high school athlete. But unlike others, she also has to withstand frequent harassment and threats from mostly strangers who say she doesn’t belong on the field or in the same bathroom as those who were born female.

Her mother, Nena Hernandez, recalled an anonymous message she received ahead of a competition from someone who said her daughter wouldn’t be able to jump if her legs were broken.

“How do I know they’re not going to do something to my baby?” Nena Hernandez said. “I do have to live with that fear … We have to deal with the humiliation. We do have to deal with the pressure. So when we get home it’s like, ‘ugh, another day we were able to make it out of there alive,’ pretty much. And it’s exhausting on the body. It’s exhausting on the nervous system.”

‘Common core beliefs’

The “Save Girls’ Sports” campaign has been largely promoted by the California Family Council. It is one of numerous “family policy councils” across the country that are “independent entities with no corporate or financial relationship to,” but also “share common core beliefs” with faith-based nonprofit Family Research Council, according to the latter’s website.

The Southern Poverty Law Center has labeled both organizations and their affiliates as hate groups.

“Family Policy Councils (FPCs) accomplish at the state level what Family Research Council does at the national level — shape public debate and formulate public policy,” according to the Family Research Council’s website. “FPCs work with state legislators, local government officials, and community leaders to encourage and initiate pro-family policies.”

In addition to the “Save Girls’ Sports” campaign, the California Family Council has also supported efforts to prevent trans people from sharing restrooms with cisgendered women and girls as well as policies that would require educators to notify parents and guardians if a student identifies as queer.

In the run-up to the midterm elections in November, the organization has championed conservative candidates like Bianco and Hilton for governor and Sonja Shaw, current Chino Valley Unified School District Board of Education president, for state superintendent of schools.

Shaw has been at the forefront promoting what are referred to as either “parents’ right to know” or “forced outing” rules by supporters and opponents, respectively. The versions of such policies that have made their way onto a handful of school board agendas across the state have language nearly identical to the one that had been passed by the board she sits on, but later rescinded in response to challenges from the state.

Shaw acknowledged the support of the California Family Council, but said the group was not directly involved with her campaign.

“I come from a place of, six years ago, knowing nothing about politics, absolutely zero,” Shaw said. “I couldn’t even tell you the difference between the Republican and Democratic [parties]. I got involved because it touched our kids. That’s the only reason.”

Critics of the policies Shaw has advanced related to LGBTQ issues say it’s all part of a well-funded campaign to get conservative-backed candidates into elected office. In the process, that movement has cultivated a following of extremists who have repeatedly resorted to harassment and threats of violence against trans athletes and their families behind the banner of pro-family values, according to Daisy Gardner.

Gardner is an educational advocate with Our Schools USA and the mother of both a CIF athlete and a trans teen. She first began looking into the organizations and people associated behind anti-LGBTQ policies in California after strangers came to a school board meeting in her home district to protest a Pride celebration in May of 2023.

“About 200 very angry beefy men showed up to an elementary school in my region at LAUSD, LA Region North,” Gardner said. “It was Saticoy Elementary and these folks showed up with bear spray. They showed up with knives. They showed up looking to start a fight.”

Since then she has observed many of the same people attending school district meetings across California to promote parents’ right to know policies, exclusion of trans students in girls’ bathrooms and sports competitions as well as other measures supported by the California Family Council.

Gardner said they have frequently attempted to intimidate her and the Hernandez family. Some have gone as far as to shout crude remarks at AB Hernandez from the stands in the middle of a meet and surround Nena Hernandez as she attempted to leave the stadium.

“I’ve seen the toll it’s taken on their family, and it’s shameful,” Gardner said.

Both sides claim safety issues

Both Shaw and Sophia Lorey, outreach director for the California Family Council, denounced threats and harassment toward AB Hernandez or any other teen and their loved ones. They said their focus remains on the well-being of female athletes.

They and their followers say allowing trans athletes on girls’ teams is unsafe for cisgender teens. One cisgender athlete who spoke at the May 9 rally said she had been changing her clothes in her car because she was afraid to do so in the locker room because she had a trans teammate.

Supporters of trans rights say it’s members of the LGBTQ community who face the greatest risk of violence or harassment in locker rooms and public bathrooms. Trevor Norcross said his trans daughter, a former runner for the Arroyo Grande High track team, Lily Norcross, wore her P.E. uniform to school for months to avoid having any confrontation while changing on campus.

Lily Norcross avoided using the bathroom and, on one occasion when she simply couldn’t avoid using the facilities, she chose to go to the girls’ locker room because she knew it would be monitored by adults. There were other girls there at the time who didn’t seem to mind her presence, but later alleged she had been watching them, setting off a wave of controversy.

Despite those experiences, Norcross said his daughter had mostly been accepted by her peers in high school. He said that was largely due to her involvement with the track team, which gave her classmates a chance to get know her as a person.

Abigail Jones, a trans teen and former cross country runner for Martin Luther King Jr. High in Riverside, became the target of protests at her campus after earning a spot on the main varsity team.

She was also the subject of a lawsuit claiming her membership on the team limited opportunities for cisgendered athletes, which was later dismissed for lack of evidence.

She was later gutted when two of her friends on the hurdling team boycotted their races with her at one meet.

“You could visibly see that I was hurt by what had happened,” Jones said. “And other runners, including some I had raced against and even beaten before, came over to comfort me. They also told me that people had approached them asking them to boycott my events too.”

Jones reached out to her friends the next day and managed to make amends with them. She has since graduated high school and has been speaking out on LGBTQ issues while take a gap year from her education. When she starts school again later this year, she plans to continue running cross country.

Federal lawsuit

Hernandez, Norcross and Jones are three of five athletes anonymously referred to in a lawsuit filed by the Trump administration seeking to compel California and the CIF to follow an executive order to bar transgender people from girls’ sports teams. They claim allowing them to compete violates Title IX by ignoring “undeniable biological differences between boys and girls, in favor of an amorphous ‘gender identity.’”

Attorneys for the CIF and the state say allowing five trans athletes to compete poses no real harm to the nearly six million students across the state. They have moved to dismiss the federal government’s suit.