Justice Division sues California over transgender scholar athletes

The U.S. Justice Division sued California Wednesday over the state’s coverage permitting transgender scholar athletes to compete in feminine sports activities, which the division mentioned violates federal anti-discrimination legal guidelines.

The governor’s workplace didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.

The lawsuit is the most recent improvement in an ongoing battle between President Donald Trump and California within the battle over transgender participation in sports activities. Tensions between the famously liberal state, which has repeatedly taken the administration to court docket on a variety of points, and Trump, who has vowed to crack down on transgender rights, have risen for months.

At California’s state observe meet in late Might, AB Hernandez — an overtly transgender woman from Jurupa Valley — posted the highest scores within the women’ triple bounce and excessive bounce.  Beneath guidelines enacted days prior, she shared first place with the women who reached the second-farthest distance. The rule adjustments got here after Trump threatened to drag federal funding from the state if she was allowed to take part.

On the faculty degree, transgender San Jose State volleyball participant Blaire Fleming was the topic of nice dialogue and have become a goal of Trump’s presidential marketing campaign final fall for her participation with the Spartans’ girls’s workforce. She was not out on the time, however revealed in a New York Occasions Journal story this spring that she was transgender. The varsity is presently beneath a federal investigation over a possible civil rights violation for permitting a transgender athlete to compete on a girls’s workforce.

The Trump administration additionally launched an investigation into the state’s training division over its insurance policies on transgender athletes in February and an investigation in April into the California Interscholastic Federation, the state’s governing physique for highschool athletics.

CIF declined to touch upon the Justice Division’s lawsuit, saying it doesn’t touch upon authorized issues. The California Division of Schooling didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.

Final month, the U.S. Division of Schooling concluded its investigations into the California Division of Schooling and the California Interscholastic Federation and decided each companies violated Title IX — a federal regulation that prohibits sex-based discrimination — by “allowing males in girls’ sports and intimate spaces.” The Trump administration gave California 10 days to resolve the violation by forbidding transgender athletes from feminine sports activities, restoring data and awards to feminine athletes who misplaced to transgender athletes and issuing customized letters to feminine athletes apologizing for permitting their “educational experience to be marred by sex discrimination.”

California notified the U.S. Division of Schooling Monday that the state training division and CIF wouldn’t adjust to the Trump administration’s calls for.

The Justice Division’s lawsuit — filed in federal court docket in Los Angeles — seeks a everlasting injunction directing all California CIF member faculties to ban the participation of transgender athletes in feminine sports activities. The lawsuit additionally seeks to implement a monitoring and enforcement system to make sure compliance and to compensate feminine athletes who “have been denied equal athletic opportunities” because of the state’s alleged violations. The Justice Division’s lawsuit additionally seeks an award of damages to the U.S.

The grievance alleges California’s federal training funding from the U.S. Division of Schooling totals $44.3 billion for the 2025 fiscal 12 months, of which $3.8 billion stays “available for drawdown” by the state’s training division. California acquired about $8 billion in federal funding for Ok-12 training and about $7 billion in federal funding for greater training in 2024.

“California is on the wrong side of the law and the wrong side of history,” mentioned United States Lawyer Invoice Essayli of the Central District of California. “Women deserve dignity, respect, and an equal opportunity to compete on their own sports teams. The time for talk is over. California must comply with Title IX and end its civil rights violations against women. No person, no state, is above the law.”

Michael Nowels and Darren Sabedra contributed reporting.