A federal judge this week threw out the U.S. Justice Department’s lawsuit challenging California policies that allow transgender athletes to compete on school sports teams that match their gender identity.
The Justice Department alleged that the California Department of Education and the California Interscholastic Federation were in violation of Title IX, a 1972 federal law that prohibits sex-based discrimination in any education program or activity that receives federal funding. It argued the law requires that sports eligibility and facilities access be based on biological sex, not gender identity.
But U.S. District Judge Cynthia Valenzuela found that Title IX does no such thing — and that a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling allowing other states to apply such eligibility standards only reinforced her conclusion.
Valenzuela, an appointee of President Biden, wrote that the Supreme Court had “explained that Title IX’s regulations ‘expressly permit schools’ to maintain separate sex-based teams and ultimately held that States ‘may maintain women’s and girls’ sports for biological females’ and ‘may determine eligibility’ for those teams based on biological sex” — and “thus upheld the biological-sex eligibility rules before it without holding that Title IX requires every school to adopt the same rule.”
Valenzuela wrote that the Supreme Court “declined to decide whether Title IX permits transgender girls to participate on girls’ and women’s teams,” and “expressly stated” that nothing in its opinion addressed that “distinct question.”
Valenzuela wrote that she, likewise, did not need to decide that issue, only “whether Title IX and its implementing regulations clearly required California to exclude transgender girls from girls’ teams and sex-separated facilities.” She found “they did not.”
Therefore, Valenzuela wrote that California “lacked clear notice” of such categorical exclusion of transgender athletes as a condition of the federal funding California received, and other court decisions — including the Supreme Court’s in June — did not “supply the missing clarity.”
A Justice Department spokesperson said the agency is “evaluating our options for appeal.”
“We are disappointed by the Court’s order, and remain committed to enforcing President Trump’s agenda preventing boys from playing in girls’ sports,” it said, referring to transgender girls.
The Justice Department suit threatened to cut $44.3 billion in federal funding from the California Department of Education, if the state did not change its policies.
California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta’s office, which represented the California agencies in court, deferred questions to the agencies.
Rebecca Brutlag, a spokesperson for the CIF, said it does not comment on legal matters. The California Department of Education did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
In court, they had made similar arguments as those Valenzuela cited in her ruling — arguing that Title IX does not require excluding transgender girls from girls’ sports, and neither does the recent Supreme Court ruling.
LGBTQ+ rights organizations praised Valenzuela’s ruling Tuesday.
Trevor Norcross, the father of Lily Norcross — a teenage transgender track athlete at Arroyo Grande High School on the Central Coast and one of the athletes whose participation in sports was cited by the Justice Department as a violation of Title IX — said it is “time to get back to supporting and enjoying girls’ and women’s sports instead of trying to tear them down.”
“I’m especially excited that girls in California can now focus on athletic competition without having to worry about manufactured culture wars and the prospect of invasive body inspections if they don’t look feminine enough,” he said.
Rainbow Families Action, a group that advocates for the rights of trans kids, hailed the decision, saying the Trump administration’s “relentless and hateful campaign against transgender children has hit another roadblock.”
The Justice Department’s lawsuit was brought by two longtime critics of California’s policies for transgender students: Harmeet Dhillon, a hard-charging conservative attorney in California before her elevation to head of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division; and Bill Essayli, a conservative state lawmaker before his elevation to lead the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles.
It was part of a much broader and ongoing effort by the Trump administration to erase trans-inclusive policies nationwide — around youth sports but also public bathrooms, medical care and official government documents.
California’s own policies for transgender athletes have been in flux.
Last year, President Trump took to his social media platform and demanded that state officials ban transgender teenage track star AB Hernandez from competing at the state track and field competition.
Amid those threats, the CIF updated its rules for transgender competitors. Under the new rules, transgender athletes can compete, but their qualifying for events cannot take a spot away from any cisgender competitor, and they must share whichever podium position they win with the next best cisgender athlete.
Hernandez went on to compete and win multiple medals, sharing her spots on the medal podiums with the cisgender athletes who otherwise would have claimed them had Hernandez not been competing. Hernandez repeated her success this year, again sharing her wins with cisgender competitors.
Los Angeles Times reporter Howard Blume contributed to this article.