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A school board in California voted to defy state policy and ban trans athletes from girls’ sports Tuesday.
The Kern County Board of Education approved a resolution to comply with the federal definition of Title IX.
The vote comes amid a feud and lawsuit between the state and President Donald Trump’s administration over the issue of males competing in girls’ sports. Now, at least one school board has opted to side with Trump over the state authorities that have rigorously committed to keeping males in girls’ sports this year.
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Trump signed an executive order to ban males from girls’ and women’s sports nationally back in February, but California was one of the first states to publicly defy the order. The defiance enabled multiple incidents of trans athletes competing in high school girls’ basketball, cross-country and track and field in 2025, as California schools were made to continue following the state law that has protected trans inclusion in sports dating back to 2014.
The issue came to a head during the spring high school track and field postseason, when transgender athlete AB Hernandez of Jurupa Valley High School made a run for two girls’ state titles.
In May, three of the state’s esteemed Christian high schools sent a letter to the California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) challenging its longstanding policy that allows biological males in girls’ sports. Many residents, girls’ athletes and even entire educational institutions protested the trans athlete’s inclusion.
Earlier that month, JSerra Catholic High School, Orange Lutheran High School and Crean Lutheran High School sent a joint letter to the CIF on Thursday.
“CIF’s Gender Identity Policy also fosters an environment that is increasingly hostile to religious member schools. CIF’s expectation that all faith-based schools facilitate the CIF Gender Identity Policy puts religious schools in the untenable position of adhering to the tenets of their faith in their classrooms and communities but practicing something contrary to their faith on their athletic fields,” the letter read.
Now, the Kern County Board of Education is the first public school board to stand up to the state and side with Trump over the issue.
Maine, which is engulfed in a similar lawsuit with Trump over the same issue, also saw two of its public school boards pass resolutions in April to locally ban trans athletes from competing in girls’ sports.
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Trump’s Department of Justice is now suing both states, seeking injunctions on the policies that continue to enable males to compete in girls’ sports and use girls’ locker rooms.
California’s policies “eviscerate equal athletic opportunities for girls … they also require girls to share intimate spaces, such as locker rooms, with boys, causing a hostile educational environment that denies girls educational opportunities,” the lawsuit against California argues.
“The results of these illegal policies are stark: girls are displaced from podiums, denied awards, and miss out on critical visibility for college scholarships and recognition.”
California Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom has said that the California Department of Education and CIF were following laws enacted in 2013.
“I struggled with the issue of fairness when it came to sports,” Newsom said in response to the lawsuit at a July event. “And we tried to figure that out a couple of years ago, and we were unsuccessful, and we struggled with that recently.
“And my position is that I don’t think it’s fair, but I also think it’s demeaning to talk down to people, and to belittle the trans community. And I don’t like the way the right wing talks about the trans community. These people just want to survive.”
Newsom previously garnered mixed responses within his party when he said he believed males competing in girls’ sports is “deeply unfair” in a March episode of his podcast. Still, he has declined to commit to or even support the idea of banning males from girls’ sports.
Newsom is not named as a defendant in the DOJ lawsuit.
A bipartisan survey by the Public Policy Institute of California found the majority of California residents oppose biological male trans athletes competing in women’s sports.
That figure included more than 70% of the state’s school parents.
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“Most Californians support requiring transgender athletes to compete on teams matching the sex they were assigned at birth,” the poll stated.
“Solid majorities of adults (65%) and likely voters (64%) support requiring that transgender athletes compete on teams that match the sex they were assigned at birth, not the gender they identify with. An overwhelming majority of public school parents (71%) support such a requirement.”
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