The Trump administration has sued California over its policies allowing transgender athletes to compete in girls’ school sports, alleging that their participation violates federal anti-discrimination laws.
The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Los Angeles, claims that California’s policies violate Title IX, which affords legal protection against sex discrimination.
Pam Bondi, the US attorney general, in a statement took aim at Gavin Newsom, California’s governor and a Trump antagonist seen as a potential Democratic presidential candidate in 2028. Newsom in a March podcast interview with the rightwing activist Charlie Kirk called transgender participation in girls’ sports “deeply unfair”.
“Not only is it ’deeply unfair,’ it is also illegal under federal law,” Bondi said in a statement. “This Department of Justice will continue its fight to protect equal opportunities for women and girls in sports.”
A spokesperson for Newsom did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Trump, a Republican, has signed a series of executive orders restricting transgender rights, including a February directive to strip federal funding for any school that allows transgender women or girls to compete in female sports.
The suit comes weeks after the education department announced it had found California allegedly violated the law by permitting trans girls to compete on girls’ sports teams, and proposed that the state strip trans athletes of their records and awards and bar trans women from competing in women’s sports.
California has allowed trans girls to compete in girls’ sports for more than a decade – a policy that attracted little outcry until Republicans and anti-LGBTQ+ groups seized on the issue in recent years.
The justice department under Trump has already filed a similar lawsuit against Maine and has made challenging transgender rights a major civil rights priority. The lawsuit alleges that state policies “ignore undeniable biological differences between boys and girls” and diminish the integrity of girls’ sports. Advocates for LGBTQ+ rights have said transgender athletes comprise a small minority of all school athletes and bans on their participation further stigmatize a vulnerable population.
California’s policies drew national attention earlier this year when a transgender girl competing in the state track and field championship won the high jump and triple jump and finished second in the long jump, an episode cited in the justice department’s complaint. Ahead of that competition, the governing board for California high school sports had announced it would change the rules to allow more girls to take part.
The athlete who won, 16-year-old AB Hernandez, was subjected to harassment from anti-LGBTQ+ activists and targeted by the president himself who said that her participation was “demeaning” to women and girls and said he was “ordering local authorities, if necessary, to not allow” her to participate.
In an interview with the Guardian, Hernandez said that despite the criticism, she had the support of her classmates. “They see how hard I train,” she said. One of her competitors told the San Francisco Chronicle: “Sharing the podium was nothing but an honor.”
The Trump administration lawsuit cites five alleged instances of transgender athletes taking part in girls’ school sporting events in a state with nearly 6 million public school students, according to state data.
It seeks a court order barring any school under the California Interscholastic Federation from allowing transgender athletes to take part in girls’ sports competitions and to establish a process to compensate female athletes it alleges have been harmed by the state’s policy.
Newsom has repeatedly clashed with Trump, most recently over the president’s decision to deploy national guard troops to Los Angeles, California’s largest city, to quell anti-deportation protests that erupted after the Trump administration carried out workplace raids in the city.
The feud has prompted several legal battles between the Trump administration and the largest US state. The justice department under Trump has already launched an investigation into hiring practices at the University of California system and has sued Los Angeles over policies restricting the city’s cooperation with federal immigration enforcement.
Newsom sued the Trump administration over the national guard deployment.
