Donald Trump’s Education Secretary Linda McMahon is threatening to pull California’s federal education funding for allowing transgender girls to play sports on girls’ teams.
The federal Education Department announced proposed a resolution Wednesday requiring California to bar transgender women from women’s sports and strip transgender athletes of records, titles and awards. It’s the latest escalation in Trump’s effort to bar transgender athletes from women’s sports teams nationwide.
If California rejects the proposal, the Education Department could move to terminate the state’s federal education funding. Under federal guidelines, California’s education office and the sports federation have 10 days to come into compliance or risk enforcement action.
‘The Trump Administration will relentlessly enforce Title IX protections for women and girls, and our findings today make clear that California has failed to adhere to its obligations under federal law,’ McMahon said. ‘The state must swiftly come into compliance with Title IX or face the consequences that follow.’
Title IX is a 1972 law forbidding sex discrimination based in education.
California education and sports officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment Wednesday.
AB Hernandez, a transgender student at Jurupa Valley High School, competes in the high jump at the California high school track-and-field championships in Clovis, California
President Donald Trump holds a signed an executive order relating to school discipline policies as Education Secretary Linda McMahon listens in the Oval Office of the White House, April 23
Federal officials opened an investigation into the California Interscholastic Federation in February after the organization said it would abide by a state law allowing athletes to compete on teams consistent with their gender identity. That followed an executive order signed by President Donald Trump that was intended to ban transgender athletes from participating in girls and women’s sports.
In April, McMahon’s department opened an investigation into the California Department of Education over the same issue.
Both investigations concluded that state policies violated Title IX. The administration has been invoking the law in its campaign against transgender athletes, launching scores of investigations into schools, colleges and states. It’s a reversal from the Biden administration, which attempted to expand Title IX to provide protections for transgender students. A federal judge struck down the expansion before Trump took office in January.
The administration’s proposed resolution would require California to notify schools that transgender athletes should be barred from girls athletic teams and that all schools must ‘adopt biology-based definitions of the words “male” and “female.”‘
The state would also have to notify schools that any conflicting interpretation of state law would be considered a violation of Title IX.
Athletes who lost awards, titles or records to transgender athletes would have their honors restored under the proposal, and the state would be required to send personal apology letters to those athletes.
A similar resolution was offered to Maine’s education agency in a separate clash with the administration over transgender athletes. Maine rejected the proposal in April, prompting a Justice Department lawsuit seeking to terminate the state’s federal education funding.
Hernandez stands on the podium during a medal ceremony for the triple jump
The California federation separately tested a pilot policy at a state track meet in May, allowing one extra competitor in three events featuring high school junior AB Hernandez, who is trans.
The organization announced the change after Trump took to social medial to criticize Hernandez’s participation. The Justice Department said it would investigate Hernandez’s district and the state to determine if Title IX was being violated.
The American Medical Association and American Psychiatric Association have both stated that gender is a spectrum and not a binary structure, as the White House argued in its January 20 executive order ‘defending women from gender ideology.’
A recent Associated Press poll found that 7 in 10 American adults want transgender female athletes banned from girls and women’s sports at the high school, college or professional level.
Although the issue continues to make headlines, the number of transgender athletes in female sports remains very low. NCAA President Charlie Baker said in January that only 10 publicly transgender athletes were currently competing among the organization’s 510,000 student athletes.
AB Hernandez, center left, shares the first-place spot on the podium with Kira Gant Hatcher during a medal ceremony for the triple jump at the California championships in Clovis
A 2023 UCLA study estimated that fewer than 1 percent of US adults identify as transgender.
About half of US adults approve of Trump’s handling transgender issues, according to a May poll — a relative high point for a president who has the approval overall of about 4 in 10 Americans.
But support for his individual policies on transgender people is not uniformly strong, with a clearer consensus against policies that affect youth.
The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research survey of 1,175 adults conducted this month found there’s more support than opposition on allowing transgender troops in the military, while most don’t want to allow transgender students to use the public school bathrooms that align with their gender identity and oppose using government programs to pay for gender-affirming health care for transgender youth.
