The LGBTQ+ community rallies in solidarity, opposing the Social Studies Alive! ban in Temecula Valley Unified in June 2023.
Credit: Mallika Seshadri / EdSource
California Attorney General Rob Bonta is formally backing a motion to prevent the Temecula Valley Unified School District from implementing policies that could censor instruction about race and gender as well as those that force employees to notify parents if their child shows signs of being transgender.
In August, Public Counsel, the nation’s largest pro bono law firm, and Ballard Spahr LLP, filed a case against Temecula Valley Unified School District on behalf of its parents, teachers, the teachers union and students. A hearing on the motion for a preliminary injunction to block the board from enforcing its policies as the case moves forward will take place on Jan. 24.
Bonta’s brief, in support of the plaintiffs, marks the first time in recent history that the state has intervened in litigation to curb ideological censorship in the classroom, according to Public Counsel’s Opportunity Under Law project supervising attorney Amanda Mangaser Savage.
“The state is recognizing that this case will be a bellwether for courts across the state and for, frankly, states across the nation in terms of what school boards can and cannot do in classrooms,” Mangaser Savage said.
“It is abundantly clear under the law that school boards can’t restrict students’ access to ideas on an ideological basis, but that is precisely what is happening.”
This isn’t the first time Bonta has opposed transgender notification policies percolating in about half a dozen California districts. He previously opened a civil rights investigation of the same policy implemented at the Chino Valley Unified School District and had called the measures approved by Temecula Valley Unified a “grave concern.”
“The attorney general’s participation just really highlights and emphasizes that illegality. It emphasizes the strength of the legal claims that the students have brought here,” Mangaser Savage said. “So it’s really heartening to see the attorney general participate in this and certainly aligns with what we understand to be his commitment to safe, inclusive, equitable schools.”
Bonta’s brief specifically states that “forced disclosure provisions” regarding transgender students “violate these students’ state constitutional right to equal protection and statutory protections from discrimination.”
It also states that the transgender notification policy infringes on student’ right to privacy and discriminates against transgender and gender-nonconforming “students for forced disclosure, and not their cisgender peers.” It further alleges that the policy is based on outdated social stereotypes that being transgender is a mental illness.
Bonta’s brief also alleges that board policies censor materials about race and gender and that censoring aspects of a curriculum has to be “reasonably related to legitimate educational concerns,” not based on religious or philosophical disagreements.
Censored materials, according to the brief, might include speeches written by Martin Luther King Jr., major court rulings, discussion of the U.S. government’s treatment of Native Americans, study of the women’s suffrage movement and police violence against Black Americans.
“These harms aren’t limited to Temecula, students and teachers, although they are certainly the most directly and most significantly impacted. But the threat here is to the entire system of public education in California,” Mangaser Savage said.
“When teachers are limited in teaching accurate history, when books are taken off of library shelves, when material that the state has determined is necessary for its students to learn to be meaningful participants in our democracy is being censored … that is deeply problematic and that poses a threat not just to Temecula students again, but to students across the state and to the health of our democracy as a whole.”
Community member Kayla Church stands in support of LGBTQ+ community and in opposition to Temecula Valley Unified curriculum ban.
Credit: Mallika Seshadri / EdSource
While litigation moves forward, the Temecula Valley Unified District can keep enforcing its transgender notification policy as well as its ban on critical race theory, which restricts instruction on race and gender more broadly, Riverside County Judge Eric A. Keen ruled Friday.
In what seemed to be a contradiction to this decision, Keen had ruled on Feb. 15 that the case — Mae M. v. Komrosky — filed on behalf of the district’s teachers union, teachers, parents and students, in August by Ballard Spahr and the country’s largest pro-bono law firm Public Counsel LLP — will move forward. The plaintiffs had asked Keen to temporarily block enforcement of the policies while the case was fought out in court, but did not get it.
“We are deeply disappointed with the denial of the preliminary injunction, primarily for the students and teachers and parents that we represent,” said Amanda Mangaser Savage, supervising attorney for Public Counsel’s Opportunity Under Law project.
“While these policies remain in effect, students in Temecula’s classrooms are being denied access to an accurate and fact-based education and, instead, are receiving an education that is dictated entirely by the board members’ ideological preferences.”
Supporters of the board’s policy, including Joseph Komrosky, the Temecula Valley Unified school board president, have claimed that the policies do not discriminate against transgender students or students of color.
“The diversity that exists among the District’s community of students, staff, parents, and guardians is an asset to be honored and valued,” Komrosky said in a news release by Advocates for Faith and Freedom, a Murrieta-based law firm, “dedicated to protecting religious liberty in the courts,” that is representing the district for free.
“These policies were enacted by the school board to ensure our district puts the needs of students and their parents above all else,” adding that Temecula Valley Unified is committed to providing students with a well-rounded education devoid of “discrimination and indoctrination.”
In August, the board passed a policy that percolated through about a half-dozen other districts, requiring that school administrators notify parents if their child shows signs of being transgender.
Edgar Diaz, president of the Temecula Valley Educators Association, the district’s teachers union, criticized Keen’s ruling, stating that it “does not consider the ripple effects” of the district’s policies.
Diaz added that wooden blocks have since been placed on library shelves in lieu of books because teachers and staff fear “there may be some banned concept in them.”
“We shouldn’t be banning anything; we’re an educational institution. If children are curious about something, they explore it; they talk to the teachers. And especially in high school, they’re old enough to form their own opinions about what’s real and what’s not real,” said Temecula Valley Unified school board member Steve Schwartz.
He added that if an LGBTQ+ student “doesn’t feel safe enough in their home to tell their parent but needs to share it with someone and shares it with a teacher, it doesn’t seem like a good idea for the teacher to have to tell that parent.”
Widespread divides over critical race theory
The transgender notification policies and critical race theory ban supported by the Temecula Valley board are part of a larger movement driven by conservative organizations like Reform California. These groups formed to counter widespread calls from the left for racial justice following the police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor in 2020.
Nearly 800 measures in 244 local, state and federal entities have been taken against critical race theory, according to CRT Forward, an initiative of the UCLA School of Law’s critical race studies program.
In California alone, 13 measures have been introduced at the local level, nine of which have been passed or implemented.
As of April 2023, however, 60% of anti-CRT measures were adopted in predominantly conservative states.
“Today’s ruling unfortunately means that Temecula will continue amongst the ranks of Texas and Florida,” Mangaser Savage said.
“While California is obviously a liberal state, I think that the fact that this is happening in our districts demonstrates how pernicious this is.”
The survey specifically found that between 80% and 86% of Democrats support the idea of high school students learning about LGBTQ+ topics compared with less than 40% of Republicans. Introducing LGBTQ+ topics at the elementary level garnered less support on both sides of the aisle.
Over half of those surveyed also supported discussion of topics about race at the high school level. But at the elementary level, Democrats were much more likely to support the idea of students learning about slavery, civil rights and racial inequality.
Critical race theory is usually taught at the college level, and Schwartz said it has not been taught in Temecula Valley Unified.
“But if I were a teacher today, and a student came to me and said, ‘What do you think about CRT?’ my response would be: ‘Why don’t you do some research and see what you think about it, and then we can have a discussion,’” Schwartz said.
“My thought is not to tell kids not to investigate things that they’re interested in. That’s what learning is all about.”
Asian Americans Advancing Justice Southern California
California LGBTQ Health & Human Services Network
Equal Justice Society
Equality California
Family Assistance Program
Genders & Sexualities Alliance Network
GLSEN
Inland Empire Prism Collective
Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, Inc.
LGBTQ Center OC
LGBTQ Community Center of the Desert
Legal Services of Northern California
Los Angeles LGBT Center
Planned Parenthood of the Pacific Southwest
Public Advocates, Inc.
Public School Defenders Hub
Rainbow Pride Youth Alliance
Sacramento LGBT Center
Safe Schools Project of Santa Cruz County
Transgender Law Center
TransFamily Support Services
Trevor Project
Penguin Random House and PEN America have also announced their support for the preliminary injunction.
As pressure has mounted on the district to stop its enforcement of allegedly discriminatory and illegal policies, the school board’s makeup has also changed — and more could shift in the coming months.
In December, One Temecula Valley PAC, a political action committee, lodged a recall effort against the board’s three conservative members and gathered enough signatures to move forward with a recall election this spring against Komrosky, the board president.
Conservative board member Jennifer Wiersma, however, will remain on the board, while Danny Gonzalez announced his resignation in December with plans to move to Texas.
Temecula Valley Unified’s school board met on Feb.13 to appoint a replacement but was unable to and decided to move forward with an election. Whoever replaces Gonzalez in that seat will determine whether the board retains its conservative majority.
“Despite the small but vocal opponents that seek to rewrite history and indoctrinate students,” Komrosky said, “I am very optimistic for our school district.”
Editors’ note: This story has been updated to add a statement from Public Counsel’s Opportunity Under Law project supervising attorney, Amanda Mangaser Savage.
Flanked by fourth-place winner Ellie McCuskey-Hay, left, and first-place winner Loren Webster, right, second-place winners AB Hernandez, center right, and Brooke White share the podium during a medal ceremony for the long jump at the California high school track and field championships in Clovis.
Credit: AP Photo / Jae C. Hong
Top Takeaways
California Department of Education vows to protect “all students’ access to participate in athletics in a manner that is consistent with their gender identity.”
Sixteen-year-old transgender athlete AB Hernandez shared three medals with cisgender competitors under newly rejiggered rules at California’s track and field championships last weekend, sparking controversy.
The U.S. Department of Justice warned California schools they may be held in violation of civil rights protections for girls.
The California Department of Education on Tuesday weighed in on the escalating controversy over transgender athletes in school sports, advising schools to hold the line in the wake of threats from the federal government.
The U.S. Department of Justice on Monday issued a letter warning California school districts they will face legal trouble if they don’t pledge to bar trans athletes from competition by June 9, citing civil rights concerns. The CDE countered Tuesday, advising schools to hold fast and let it respond to the Justice Department regarding matters of gender identity on behalf of the state.
“Let’s be clear: sending a letter does not change the law,” said State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond in a statement. “The DOJ’s letter to school districts does not announce any new federal law, and state law on this issue has remained unchanged since 2013. California state law protects all students’ access to participate in athletics in a manner that is consistent with their gender identity. We will continue to follow the law and ensure the safety of all our athletes.”
Last weekend’s fracas over California’s track and field championships in Clovis has become a flashpoint in the Trump administration’s campaign to target transgender athletes in girls sports, a divisive hot-button issue that conservatives have pushed aggressively of late.
President Donald Trump has threatened financial penalties for California public schools after a 16-year-old trans athlete, AB Hernandez, won three medals in last weekend’s California Interscholastic Federation State Track and Field Championships. Hernandez placed first in the high jump and triple jump and finished second in the long jump.
In the wake of a key last-minute rule change, Hernandez shared the podium with her cisgender competitors. The hastily rejiggered rules allow girls to receive medals based on where they would have finished if a transgender athlete had not been allowed to compete.
This compromise did not mollify the president.
“Biological Male competed in California Girls State Finals, WINNING BIG, despite the fact that they were warned by me not to do so,” Trump wrote in a 12:56 a.m. ET post on June 2. “As Governor Gavin Newscum fully understands, large scale fines will be imposed!!!” he added, referring to Newsom.
Harmeet Dhillon, assistant attorney general for the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, argues that letting transgender athletes into girls sports competitions constitutes sex discrimination, violating the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.
“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 has said. “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.”
The Civil Rights Division has also announced investigations into the University of Wyoming and Jefferson County Public Schools in Colorado for allegedly allowing males to live in intimate and communal spaces earmarked for females.
Town leaders in Clovis, the largely conservative city in Central California that hosted the track and field championships, called it unfair to include a transgender athlete in girls sports, The Fresno Bee reported. Chino has also filed a lawsuit on the issue.
California is among 22 states with laws that allow transgender athletes to compete with girls. Amid the state’s nearly 6 million TK-12 public school students, experts say, the number of active transgender student-athletes is estimated to be in the single digits.
Newsom, a potential 2028 presidential contender who has often jousted with Trump on social issues, shocked many on the left when he admitted that he felt allowing transgender athletes to compete against girls was “deeply unfair” during a recent interview with conservative commentator Charlie Kirk.
While Newsom himself has not as yet weighed in on this specific controversy, Izzy Gardon, a spokesperson for the governor, has praised the new rules as “a reasonable, respectful way to navigate a complex issue without compromising competitive fairness — a model worth pursuing.”
For her part, Hernandez, a junior at Southern California’s Jurupa Valley High, has been characterized as poised and unruffled amid the heated controversy.
“We could not be prouder of the way this brave student-athlete conducted herself on and off the track,” said Tony Hoang, executive director of Equality California, the state’s LGBTQ+ civil rights organization.
Flanked by fourth-place winner Ellie McCuskey-Hay, left, and first-place winner Loren Webster, right, second-place winners AB Hernandez, center right, and Brooke White share the podium during a medal ceremony for the long jump at the California high school track-and-field championships in Clovis.
Credit: AP Photo / Jae C. Hong
Top Takeaways
Transgender athlete AB Hernandez was unflustered amid controversy and protest over her participation in girls’ sports.
Under revised rules for the championship, she shared two first-place and a second-place medals with cisgender competitors.
President Trump threatened to defund California if she participated.
A lone boo. A jeering yell of “That’s a boy.” Rhythmic clapping cheering on her and others. A scream of “let’s go” from the crowd. A nation watching.
Unrattled by the controversy around her participation in girls’ track and field events, AB Hernandez, an openly transgender student-athlete, achieved two first-place victories and a second-place win in the state championship on Saturday. She shared the podium and recognition with cisgender females as a result of new rules hurriedly adopted last week.
Sparked by threats from the federal government, just days ahead of this past weekend’s Track and Field State Championship, the California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) changed its rules regarding the number of girls who could qualify for and would win in events with a transgender athlete.
The state faced backlash over Hernandez’s participation with President Donald Trump threatening to cut federal funding to California and demanding that the state bar her inclusion. In response, California officials tweaked the rules to expand the number of cisgender girls who could qualify if a trans athlete was participating. Under the changed rules, a cisgender girl displaced by a transgender competitor was awarded whichever medal she would have claimed had the transgender athlete not been competing.
Hernandez, a junior at Jurupa Valley High in Southern California, was unflappable in the Veterans Memorial Stadium at Buchanan High School, even when insulted or met with silence in the packed venue.
She has “consistently displayed more dignity, maturity, and grace than the many adults, from the president on down, who chose to attack and bully her to score political points,” said Tony Hoang, executive director of Equality California, the state’s LGBTQ+ civil rights organization. “We could not be prouder of the way this brave student-athlete conducted herself on and off the track.”
Hernandez qualified as the top competitor in the long jump and triple jump Friday, outperforming others by 6.25 inches and 9.75 inches, respectively, and in high jump, scoring the same as five other athletes.
During the championship round Saturday, she was outperformed in the long jump and continued to tie with other athletes in the high jump.
Even though she is not ranked as a top athlete nationally, she held on to California’s top marks in the triple jump.
This past weekend’s championship revealed conflicting stances on the issue of transgender females competing in women’s sports that point to unresolved questions about what should be done to ensure fairness and inclusion.
Friday’s qualifier featured a “Free Speech Area” outside of the stadium that remained empty most of the day. No signs were allowed in the event, but a plane flew a “No boys in girls’ sports!” banner.
Signs reminded attendants of the importance of sportsmanship at the State Track and Field Championships at Veterans Memorial Stadium at Buchanan High School in Clovis on Friday, May 30, 2025.Lasherica Thornton/ EdSource
Also outside the event, along the roads or in other areas, small groups protested Friday and Saturday — much smaller crowds than the dozens who questioned Hernandez’s participation at the southern region qualifier events over the last couple of weeks.
Donning a “Make America Great Again” hat and American flag-themed attire, Mimi Israelah, a self-proclaimed activist from Long Beach, traveled more than four hours to witness Hernandez, whom she referred to as “the trans,” compete in the girls’ field events.
“I don’t know why they’re allowing that because women’s sports is supposed to be for women,” Israelah said, often referring to Hernandez as “he.” She said transgender athletes should have their own division if they wish to compete.
Including transgender athletes
So far, research on the fairness of transgender athletes, published by the Journal of the Endocrine Society, finds that testosterone is the “only established” advantage men have over women.
More specifically, males who have gone through puberty reportedly have 15 times the amount of circulating testosterone than females who’ve gone through puberty, equaling at least a 10% performance advantage in running and swimming and a 20% advantage in jumping events, according to a 2018 Endocrine Review.
“He might be transitioned, but he is still a male,” Israelah said. “It’s not fair for the women, and it is destroying women’s sports.”
Until late 2021, the Olympics required transgender women to reduce their testosterone levels to below a certain threshold to compete. Under the former medical requirement, transgender women had to undergo gender-affirming care, such as testosterone-reducing medication. The Olympics have since eliminated the requirement related to testosterone levels, leading to polarizing debates even in professional sports.
California’s high school athletics guidelines, outlined by CIF, allow athletes to participate in sports aligned with their gender identity, even if it’s different from their assigned sex at birth, including transgender athletes.
‘Her own competition’
Trump has criticized Hernandez for being “less than average competitor” as a male but “practically unbeatable” as a female.
“Her numbers are not unbeatable,” said Sabrina Gomez, whose daughter Jazmaine Stewart, a Redwood High junior from Visalia, competed against Hernandez in long and triple jumps.
Stewart finished seventh in Friday’s qualifier for the long and triple jump. She earned a fifth-place spot in the long jump and a sixth-place position in the triple jump for the championship, rankings that are one spot higher since Hernandez shared the podium for her wins.
“For my daughter, doing track has always been an individual sport for her, so she’s her own competition,” Gomez said. Even so, with the state championship as a goal, they’d long been aware of and prepared to face off against Hernandez’s numbers.
Gomez said she couldn’t characterize Hernandez’s participation as unfair after researching her marks, which fall within the range of other female athletes.
In fact, Gomez said, if not for Trump, there wouldn’t have been contention about Hernandez’s participation, which is aligned with CIF’s decade-plus-old policy.
According to its materials on gender diversity, CIF is one of 16 state sports associations with gender-inclusive policies that facilitate the participation of transgender, nonbinary and other gender-diverse students in school athletics.
Since February 2013, the CIF has had philosophy and eligibility rules for participation based on gender identity.
Trump has threatened other states with cuts in federal funding if they continue to allow transgender athletes in youth and women’s sports. Trump began gutting federal education dollars from Maine, and the matter ended up in court.
The California Interscholastic Federation’s addition of gender identity participation and eligibility rules in 2013 followed legislation that allows students to participate on sports teams based on their gender identity. The CIF guidelines go further to state that athletes will participate in programs consistent with their gender identity or the gender they most consistently express.
The statewide policy forhigh schoolers does not have a legal or medical requirement, such as a documented name change or gender-confirming care, for transgender students to compete. Student participation is based solely on their gender identity or expression.
A transgender student-athlete, according to CIF documents, has a protected right to privacy if they choose not to disclose their gender identity.
There have been instances of teams forfeiting games due to the belief that their opponent had a transgender player.
But Hernandez is not the first openly transgender athlete to compete in California, and this isn’t her first time competing.
In early May, a few Christian high schools — JSerra Catholic High School, Orange Lutheran High School and Crean Lutheran High School — penned a letter, expressing “disappointment in CIF’s failure to respect and protect our female athletes and our strong opposition to CIF’s Gender Identity Policy.”
Earlier this year, Trump issued an executive order, “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports,” to ensure women and girls can compete in safe and fair sports; much like his other orders, he threatened federal funding for noncompliance. In response, CIF at the time said it would enforce its existing policy consistent with state legislation.
U.S. Justice department opens title Ix investigation of California
Title IX is a 1972 landmark federal civil rights law that prohibits discrimination based on sex in education, applying to colleges and schools that receive federal funding.
It protects students from being denied access to educational and athletic opportunities.
This week, as the U.S. JusticeDepartment launched a national civil rights investigation into the policy, the CIF implemented a “pilot entry process” to allow cisgender female athletes who failed to qualify to compete in the championships in Clovis — a “reasonable, respectful way to navigate this complex issue without compromising competitive fairness,” Izzy Gardon, a spokesperson for Newsom, told The Sacramento Bee.
Another temporary rule change said any cisgender girl who was displaced by a transgender competitor would be awarded whichever medal she would have claimed had the transgender athlete not been competing.
Based on Friday’s results and Hernandez’s participation, 13 student athletes qualified in the girls’ long, triple and high jump categories rather than the traditional 12 for Saturday’s championship.
Among the athletes who competed, there were conflicting views about the fairness of the CIF policy and rule change.
For example, southern regional second-place long jump finisher Katie McGuinness, who placed sixth Friday behind Hernandez and four others, spoke out leading up to this past weekend’s championship.
In an exclusive with Fox News, McGuiness, a La Cañada High senior, said she felt discouraged facing the trans athlete due to apparent “genetic” disadvantages.
Meanwhile, other athletes and teams, including those in Clovis Unified which hosted the championship, declined EdSource interviews so that athletes could focus on their performance and not be distracted.
At Saturday’s championship, Long Beach’s Wilson High senior Loren Webster clutched the long jump title over Hernandez. Hernandez shared the second-place honor with River City High School senior Brooke White, reflecting CIF’s rule change. McGuinness finished third instead of fourth due to the second-place title being shared.
For the first-place triple jump medal, though Hernandez’s score beat her competitors, she shared the podium with St. Mary College High junior Kira Gant Hatcher.
In the high jump, there was a three-way tie as Hernandez, Monta Vista High junior Lelani Laruelle, and Long Beach Polytechnic High senior Jillene Wetteland hit the same marks.
Other states are also reckoning with transgender athletic participation – and victory.
Gomez, the parent of the Redwood High student athlete, said that how community members, coaches, parents, and others respond or react will set an example for the students looking up to them.
“Learning how to respond,” she said, “to what the world throws at you makes a difference to the attitude that you’ll have going into a situation.”
Conservative groups and LGBTQ+ rights supporters protest outside the Glendale Unified School District offices in Glendale on June 6, 2023. Several hundred people gathered at district headquarters, split between those who support or oppose teaching that exposes youngsters to LGBTQ+ issues in schools.
Credit: Keith Birmingham/The Orange County Register via AP
California activists seeking to rein in transgender children’s rights to care and self-expression failed to place a trifecta of restrictions on the November ballot.
The organization Students First: Protect Kids California started too late to consolidate their three separate initiatives into one, and its signature-gathering came up short of the 546,651 verifiable signatures that had to be collected within six months to make the presidential election ballot. The goal was to collect 800,000 signatures to be safe.
But battles over transgender issues will continue to burn bright in courts, school districts and the Legislature. Despite a setback, initiative organizers were buoyed by the 400,000 signatures that thousands of volunteers collected. They are confident that they will attract more donations and enough signatures to qualify for the November ballot two years from now — and find more support than leaders in heavily Democratic California assume exists.
“We’re very confident that voters would pass this if it gets to the ballot box,” said Jonathan Zachreson, a Roseville City school board member and co-founder of Protect Kids California. “We gathered more signatures for a statewide initiative than any all-volunteer effort in the history of California.”
Prohibit transgender female students in grades seven and up from participating in female sports while restricting gender-segregated bathrooms and locker room facilities to students assigned that gender at birth. The initiative would overturn a decade-old state law that requires schools to accommodate a student’s gender identity in their choice of sports and activities.
Ban gender-affirming health care for transgender patients under 18.
Require schools to notify parents if a student identifies as transgender through actions like switching a name or to a pronoun associated with a different gender, joining a sports team or using a bathroom that doesn’t match the student’s sex assigned at birth or school record.
The last issue has sparked a firestorm within the past year.
Last week, a Democratic legislator introduced a late-session bill that would preempt mandatory parental notification. Assembly Bill 1955, by Assemblymember Chris Ward, D-San Diego, would prohibit school districts from adopting a mandatory parental notification policy and bar them from punishing teachers who defy outing policies of LGBTQ+ students.
Last year, Assemblymember Bill Essayli, R-Corona, introduced a bill that would require parental notification, but AB 1314 died in the Assembly Education Committee without getting a hearing. Committee Chair Al Muratsuchi, D-Torrance, reasoned the bill would “potentially provide a forum for increasingly hateful rhetoric targeting LGBTQ youth.”
Ward cited surveys of transgender and gender nonconforming youths that found most felt unsafe or unsupported at home. In one national survey, 10% reported someone at home had been violent toward them because they were transgender, and 15% had run away or were kicked out of home because they were transgender.
The California Department of Education has issued guidance that warns that parental notification policies would violate students’ privacy rights and cites a California School Boards Association model policy that urges districts to protect students’ gender preferences.
But Zachreson argues that even if children have a right to gender privacy that excludes their parents, which he denies exists, students waive it through their actions. “At school, their teachers know about it, their peers and volunteers know about it, other kids’ parents know about it — and yet the child’s own parent doesn’t know that the school is actively participating in the social transition,” he said.
In some instances, he said, schools are actively taking steps to keep name changes and other forms of gender expression secret from the parents.
“What we’re saying is, no, you can’t do that. You have to involve the parents in those decisions,” he said.
Ward responds that many teachers don’t want to be coerced to interfere with students’ privacy and gender preferences. “Teachers have a job to do,” he said. “They are not the gender police.”
A half-dozen school districts with conservative boards, including Rocklin, Temecula Valley and Chino Valley, have adopted mandatory parental notification policies. Last fall, California Attorney General Rob Bonta sued Chino Valley, arguing its policy is discriminatory. A state Superior Court judge in San Bernardino agreed that it violated the federal equal protection clause and granted a preliminary injunction. The case is on appeal.
Last July, a judge for the U.S. District of Eastern California threw out a parent’s lawsuit against Chico Unified for its policy prohibiting disclosure of a student’s transgender status to their parent without the student’s explicit consent. The court ruled that it was appropriate for the district to allow students to disclose their gender identity to their parents “on their own terms.” Bonta and attorneys general from 15 states filed briefs supporting Chico Unified; the case, too, is on appeal.
While some teachers vow to sue if required to out transgender students to their parents, a federal judge in Southern California sided with two teachers who sued Escondido Union School District for violating their religious beliefs by requiring them to withhold information to parents about the gender transition of children. The judge issued a preliminary injunction against the district and then ordered the return of the suspended teachers to the classroom.
No California appellate court has issued a ruling on parent notification, and it will probably take the U.S. Supreme Court for a definitive decision. Essayli pledged to take a case there.
The national picture
Seven states, all in the deeply red Midwest and South, have laws requiring identification of transgender students to their parents, while five, including Florida and Arizona, don’t require it but encourage districts to adopt ther own version, according to the Movement Advancement Project or MAP, an independent nonprofit.
Two dozen states, including Florida, Texas, and many Southern and Midwest states ban best-practice health care, medication and surgical care for transgender youth, and six states, including Florida, make it a felony to provide surgical care for transgender care. Proponents cite the decision in March by the English public health system to prohibit youths under 16 from beginning a medical gender transition to bolster the case for tighter restrictions in the United States.
California has taken the opposite position; it is one of 15 like-minded states and the District of Columbia with shield laws to protect access to transgender health care. They include New York, Oregon, Washington, Colorado and Massachusetts.
Twenty-five states have laws or regulations banning the participation of 13- to 17-year-old transgender youth in participating in sports consistent with their gender identification.
Not one solidly blue state is among those that have adopted the restrictions that Protect Kids California is calling for. But Zachreson and co-founder Erin Friday insist that contrary to the strong opposition in the Legislature, California voters would be open to their proposals. They point to favorable results in a survey of 1,000 California likely voters by the Republican-leaning, conservative pollster Spry Strategies last November.
59% said they would support and 29% would oppose legislation that “restricts people who are biologically male, but who now identify as women, from playing on girl’s sports teams and from sharing facilities that have traditionally been reserved for women.”
72% said they agreed, and 21% disagreed that “parents should be notified if their child identifies as transgender in school.”
21% said they agreed, and 64% disagreed that “children who say they identify as transgender should be allowed to undergo surgeries to try to change them to the opposite sex or take off-label medications and hormones.”
The voters surveyed were geographically representative and reflective of party affiliation, but not demographically: The respondents were mostly white and over 60, and, in a progressive state, were divided roughly evenly among conservatives, moderates and liberals.
Two versions of protecting children
Both sides in this divisive cultural issue say they’re motivated to protect children. One side says it’s protecting transgender children to live as they are, without bias and prejudice that contribute to despair and suicidal thoughts. The other side says it’s protecting kids from coercion to explore who they aren’t, from gender confusion and exposure to values at odds with their family’s.
Zachreson and Friday wanted to title their initiative “Protect Kids of California Act of 2024.” But Bonta, whose office reviews initiatives’ titles and summaries, chose instead “Restrict Rights of Transgender Youth. Initiative Statute.” Zachreson and Friday, an attorney, appealed the decision, but a Superior Court judge in Sacramento upheld Bonta’s wording, which he said was accurate, not misleading or prejudicial.
Zachreson is appealing again. A more objective title and summary would make a huge difference, he said, by attracting financial backing to hire signature collectors and the support and resources of the California Republican Party, which declined to endorse the initiative. That was a strategic mistake in an election year when turnout will be critical.
”The people who support the initiative are passionate about it,” he said.
Political observer Dan Schnur, who teaches political communications at USC, UC Berkeley and Pepperdine University, agreed that the gender debate could have motivated Republicans and swing voters to go to the polls.
“There’s no question that the Attorney General’s ballot language had a devastating effect on the initiative’s supporters, and it could have almost as much of an impact on Republican congressional candidates this fall,” he said.
Most of us have never met a transgender person. The first time I knowingly met a transgender person was 2016, in Los Angeles, where I met Caitlyn Jenner, once celebrated as the Olympic superstar Bruce Jenner. I attended a corporate luncheon, where she was the main draw for an audience of young people (of which I was not one).
Trump and his friends have made a major issue of demonizing trans men and women, although they are a tiny proportion of the population (1%?) and threaten no one. So far as I know, they are not murderers, rapists, or members of violent gangs. What they want is to live their lives in peace, without harassment.
My view, as I have often expressed in the comments section, is that it’s not up to me or you or Trump to tell them how to live. The decisions they make are not my business nor anyone else’s aside from their parents and medical professionals. In Caitlyn’s case, she decided to transition at the age of 65, a decade ago. She is a political anomaly, as she supported Trump in the 2024 election, despite the hysteria he promoted about trans people.
Here is a better representative of a trans woman: Hannah Szabó.
Hannah Szabó
A friend sent me a video of Hannah Szabó speaking at Central Synagogue in Manhattan on April 4. She is a senior at Yale. She is editor-in-chief of the Yale Historical Review and has a double major in Computing-&-Linguistics (B.S.) and Comparative Literature (B.A.).
Central Synagogue is a historic reform synagogue. Rabbi Angela Buchdahl is the first and probably the only Korean-American rabbi in the country. Both my sons celebrated their bar mitzvahs in this synagogue almost 50 years ago.
One of Trump’s major goals during his campaign was to strip any rights from transgender people and make them invisible. He and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth agree that trans men and women should not serve in the military and should not receive gender-affirming care to support their transition to a different gender identity. Trump signed an executive order ousting them from the military.
The Pentagon will resume gender-affirming care for transgender service members, according to a memo obtained by POLITICO, an embarrassing setback to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s efforts to restrict their participation.
The memo says the Defense Department is returning to the Biden-era medical policy for transgender service members due to a court order that struck down Hegseth’s restrictions as unconstitutional. The administration is appealing the move, but a federal appeals court in California denied the department’s effort to halt the policy while its challenge is pending.
As a result, the administration is barred from removing transgender service members or restricting their medical care, a priority of President Donald Trump and Hegseth. The administration insisted its restrictions were geared toward people experiencing medical challenges related to “gender dysphoria,” but two federal judges said in March that the policy was a thinly veiled ban on transgender people that violated the Constitution.
The Trump administration on Thursday asked the Supreme Court to allow the Pentagon to ban transgender servicemembers while legal battles continue to play out.
Both judges ordered the military to refrain from forcing out more than 1,000 transgender troops and to resume providing for their medical care, including surgical procedures and voice and hormone therapy. The memo is the latest move by the Pentagon to comply with those orders.
But it presents another headache for Hegseth, who has made culture war issues — such as changing recruitment standards and reinstating the ban — a key piece of his effort to make the military more lethal. Hegseth has emphasized this theme as he’s sought to defend himself amid multiple scandals, including texting sensitive details of military operations in Yemen to multiple Signal group chats and a vicious brawlbetween his top advisers.
“Service members and all other covered beneficiaries 19 years of age or older may receive appropriate care for their diagnosis of [gender dysphoria], including mental health care and counseling and newly initiated or ongoing cross-sex hormone therapy,” Dr. Stephen Ferrara, the Pentagon’s acting assistant secretary of Defense for health affairs, said in a memo dated April 21.
Trump signed a long-expected order banning transgender people from serving in the military at the outset of the administration, just as he had done in 2017. But LGBTQ+ advocacy groups quickly pounced, calling the order discriminatory.
So far, the courts have rejected the Pentagon’s arguments that including transgender troops reduces the military’s ability to fight. U.S. District Judge Benjamin Settle ruled in March that there is no evidence that transgender troops harm military readiness, and ordered the Pentagon to return to the status quo.
A three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday became the first appellate court to hear arguments on Trump’s transgender military policy but gave little indication of how it might rule.
Defense officials acknowledged in a March memo sent to Pentagon leadership that the agency would comply with the court order, but did not detail the steps the department would take to follow it. Hegseth has openly attacked one of the judges, U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes, for her order, labeling her “Commander Reyes” in a pejorative post on X.
A general view of the California State Capitol building in Sacramento.
Credit: Kirby Lee / AP
California Democrats on an Assembly committee blocked two bills Tuesday that would have banned transgender athletes from girls’ sports, locker rooms, bathrooms and dorms, after an emotional three-hour hearing that underscored the political divide in both the country and state.
Assembly Bill 89 would have required the California Interscholastic Federation to change its policies and prohibit an athlete who was male at birth from participating in a girls’ interscholastic sports team. Assembly Bill 844 would have changed state law to require college and K-12 students who play sports to play on the teams and use the facilities that align with the sex they were assigned at birth.
Both bills failed in party-line votes to move out of the Committee on Arts, Entertainment, Sports and Tourism.
The hearing drew an overflow crowd of people with strong opinions on transgender rights, the political divide and President Donald Trump.
Assemblymember Kate Sanchez, R-Rancho Santa Margarita, author of Assembly Bill 89, said the bill was not politically motivated.
“Let’s be clear; it is not about hate,” Sanchez said. “It is not about fear, and it’s not right-wing talking points. This is entirely about fairness, safety and integrity in girls’ competitive high school athletics. That’s it.”
Committee member Rick Chavez Zbur, D-Hollywood, disagreed.
“It’s about playing on the hate and fear of transgender people, one of our most marginalized communities,” he said. “And it is right-wing talking points.”
Transgender rights are political
The rights of transgender people, who make up less than 1% of the U.S. population, have been rolled back under the Trump administration. Since Jan. 20, Donald Trump has signed executive orders restricting gender-affirming care and proclaiming there are only two biological sexes. He has announced plans to ban transgender troops from serving openly in the military, directed federal agencies to recognize only a person’s biological sex on passports and ordered that incarcerated transgender women be moved to men’s prisons.
“The Trump administration has not only targeted transgender people through hateful executive orders, but has tried to erase their existence — erasing websites that talk about them, erasing studies that inform us about the needs of the community, (and) attempting to ban them from medical care, from public life,” Zbur said. “And, you know, the thing I just want to say is this is really reminiscent, to me, of what happened in Nazi Germany in the 1930s.”
Since 2013, the California School Success and Opportunity Act has allowed students to participate in sports based on their gender identity. It’s not a popular stance in much of the nation. According to a Pew Research Center study released last month, two-thirds of the country prefer laws and policies that require athletes to compete on teams that match the sex assigned at birth.
Bill supporters quote Newsom
Republican lawmakers and other supporters of the bills were quick to bring up comments made by California Gov. Gavin Newsom during a recent podcast, during which the Democrat called the participation of transgender athletes in female sports “deeply unfair.”
“This bill is not just about compliance with federal law, it’s about doing the right thing for our girls,” said Assemblymember Bill Essayli, R-Corona, who authored Assembly Bill 844. “To quote Gov. Newsom — that right-wing extremist — this is an issue of fundamental fairness.”
Essayli has authored two other failed bills aimed at transgender students. Assembly Bill 1314, introduced in 2023, would have required schools to notify parents within three days if their child identifies as transgender. Assembly Bill 3146, introduced last year, would have banned health care providers from providing gender-affirming care in the form of procedures or prescriptions to people younger than 18.
California in the federal crosshairs
Last month, the U.S. Department of Education announced it was investigating the California Interscholastic Federation because it allegedly violated federal nondiscrimination laws by allowing transgender athletes to participate in women’s and girls’ sports.
Essayli called California’s law allowing transgender students to participate in sports and to use facilities based on their gender identity a violation of Title IX, a federal civil rights law that prohibits discrimination and harassment based on sex.
“If the Legislature does not take action to bring California into compliance with Title IX and federal directives, we will not only be failing our female students and athletes, but we are also jeopardizing a critical funding source for our school districts,” he said.
The Department of Education announced last month that it would revert to the Title IX regulations put in place during Trump’s first term in office, which base protections on biological sex, instead of on gender identity.
U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon sent a letter to Newsom last week warning that the state could lose funding because of its policies, Essayli said. The federal government contributes about $8 billion annually to California schools.
The department has also announced it is investigating the California Department of Education because of a state law that bans schools from implementing parental notification policies requiring teachers to inform parents if their child asks to use a name or pronoun different from the one assigned at birth.
Democrats on the dais, including Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas, D-Salinas, who showed up at the hearing as a substitute for an absent committee member, railed against the Trump administration’s policies.
“Meanwhile, here in California, residents are facing cuts to Medicare, to schools, and to veterans’ services,” Rivas said. “Californians have lost their jobs because of DOGE (the Department of Government Efficiency). But our Republican colleagues, they don’t want to talk about that. Republicans keep emphasizing how this bill protects women and girls. And women do face threats today, but not from the very small number of transgender kids playing sports.”
Rivas said that in his more than six years in office, he has never been stopped at the grocery store by constituents concerned about transgender athletes playing sports on girls’ teams.
“There is no epidemic of transgender kids playing basketball and soccer or any other sport for that matter,” he said. “There are more kids right now with measles in Texas than there are transgender athletes playing in the NCAA. Look, this past December, NCAA President Charlie Baker testified at a congressional hearing that out of more than 500,000 total college student athletes, he believed that fewer than 10 of those athletes were transgender. That’s not an epidemic.”
Both sides cite harm to girls
Sanchez said Tuesday that the California policy has had “devastating consequences,” resulting in transgender athletes taking titles girls should have won and hurting girls physically during competition.
Both sides rolled out stories of girls who they say have been harmed. An athlete who lost a spot on a team to a transgender athlete. A girl in a conservative state who had to pull up her top in a bathroom to prove she was not transgender. A girl who was knocked unconscious by a ball spiked by a transgender athlete.
“I don’t feel there’s such a thing as girls’ sports anymore,” said a high school student identified only as Jaden, who says her chance to compete in the CIF State Track and Field Championships is at risk because of a transgender athlete with a No. 1 ranking.
“It feels wrong,” she said. “I don’t understand how my hard work, my dedication, my very best can be rendered meaningless by a policy that ignores the differences between males and females. If we keep on the way we’re going, it sends a horrible message to young women like me that our achievements can be erased, our opportunities diminished, and our voices silenced.”
Committee Chair Christopher Ward, D-San Diego, who also chairs the LGBTQ Caucus, called the bills harmful to all girls, many of whom could find themselves faced with intrusive methods to prove they were born female.
Female athletes would be better served with legislation that would provide equitable funding and facilities for girls’ sports, diminish the harassment of players, and combat the exploitation and abuse by coaches and support staff, instead of by legislation aimed at banning transgender athletes, he said.
“It sickens me that we’ve normalized that the cruelty is the point and that the collateral impact affects all girls,” Ward said.
