The California Department of Education and the CIF said Monday that it has told the current Administration that the state will continue to allow trans women and girls to compete in female sports.
The U.S. Department of Education and the federal Office for Civil Rights alleged California’s state governing body, the California Interscholastic Federation, violated Title IX with their policy and said the state had 10 days to comply with an order to ban trans girls from sports.
The terms of the order would be similar to those the University of Pennsylvania agreed to last week.
Instead of compliance, California DOE’s general counsel Len Garfunkel responded with defiance.
Get off the sidelines and into the game
Our weekly newsletter is packed with everything from locker room chatter to pressing LGBTQ sports issues.
“The California Department of Education respectfully disagrees with OCR’s analysis and it will not sign the proposed resolution agreement,” he wrote in a short statement.
This is the latest salvo in a battle that escalated at points across the nation since the Administration put forth an executive order banning trans women and girls from interscholastic and intercollegiate athletics on February 5.
The focus intensified on California in May as transgender track and field athlete Jurupa High School junior AB Hernandez was looking like a potential champion. She went on to win two girls state championships.
With criticism coming from Administration, the CIF put forth a compromise plan prior to the state high school championship meet that would allow Hernandez to participate, but also mandate an additional slot in those events for a cisgender girl to be in the field. In the event that Hernandez, or any trans girls in competition, won an award, the cisgender finishing directly below them would get the same award.
The plan was supported by some, including California Governor Gavin Newsom. It was panned by others, including both pro-trans advocates and anti-trans advocacy groups.
U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon responded by quoting Governor Newsom’s remarks on his podcast earlier this year when he seemed to stand for exclusion of transgender women and girls in competitive sports.
“Turns out Gov. Newsom’s acknowledgment that ‘it’s an issue of fairness’ was empty political grandstanding,” McMahon stated via X.com Monday.
The decision to ignore the Administration is expected to led to a federal lawsuit against the state. Such has happened once on this issue in 2025, when the federal government came to rhetorical and legal blows with the state of Maine over trans athletes.
Maine forced the Administration to accept a settlement restoring funding to child nutrition programs in the state withheld due to claimed violations of Title IX. The state also upheld their regulations that allowed trans women and girls to compete in women’s and girl’s sports.
Subscribe to the Outsports newsletter to keep up with your favorite out athletes, inspiring LGBTQ sports stories, and more.