The Justice Department took legal action Wednesday against California over the state’s refusal to comply with orders from the Trump administration to ban transgender girls from girls’ school sports teams.
The department’s Civil Rights Division sued the California Department of Education and the California Interscholastic Federation (CIF), which oversees high school sports in the state, over what it said was a pattern of “illegal sex discrimination against female student athletes.”
Both state agencies have declined to bar transgender student-athletes from competing in line with their gender identity despite repeated warnings from the White House and a personal threat from President Trump to the state’s “large scale federal funding.”
Investigations launched earlier this year by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) found both the state Education Department and the CIF in violation of Title IX, the federal law against sex discrimination in schools that the Trump administration has said prohibits trans athletes from participating in girls’ and women’s sports.
An executive order Trump signed in February states the U.S. opposes “male competitive participation in women’s sports” and that allowing transgender student-athletes to compete in female sports violates Title IX’s promise of equal athletic opportunity.
California’s Department of Education and the CIF had until July 7 to sign a proposed resolution agreement with OCR that would have required public schools across the state to kick transgender girls off girls’ sports teams and strip them of their athletic titles and records. Cisgender girls who competed against trans student-athletes would have been sent personal apology letters, according to the proposal.
On Monday, both the state Education Department and the CIF said they would not sign OCR’s resolution agreement. Len Garfinkel, general counsel for California’s Department of Education, wrote in a brief communication that the department “respectfully disagrees with OCR’s analysis” that it broke federal law.
A 2013 state law signed by former Gov. Jerry Brown (D) explicitly protects the right of transgender students to compete on teams that match their gender identity. The Justice Department announced in May that it is investigating whether that law conflicts with Title IX.
California’s Department of Education declined to comment on Wednesday’s lawsuit, saying it cannot comment on pending litigation.
A spokesperson for Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, who has clashed publicly with Trump over the president’s threats to the state’s funding and recent immigration raids in Los Angeles, said the state Education Department and the CIF are following existing state law.
“NO COURT HAS ADOPTED THE INTERPRETATION OF TITLE IX ADVANCED BY THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT, AND NEITHER the Governor, nor THEY, get to wave a magic wand and override it –– unlike Donald Trump, California follows the law,” the spokesperson, Elana Ross, said in an email.
In the debut episode of his podcast, “This is Gavin Newsom,” in March, Newsom said he found transgender athletes in girls’ and women’s sports “deeply unfair,” breaking with most other elected Democrats.
At a press conference in Modesto, Calif., the following month, Newsom, a likely contender for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination, said he would be “open” to a conversation about limiting trans athletes’ participation if it were conducted “in a way that’s respectful and responsible and could find a kind of balance.”
Republican lawmakers and Trump administration officials have latched onto Newsom’s comments about trans athletes, demanding the governor stand on his beliefs and act against their participation.
Education Secretary Linda McMahon called Newsom’s remarks “empty political grandstanding” on Monday after California’s Education Department and the CIF declined to sign OCR’s proposed resolution agreement.
“The Governor of California has previously admitted that it is ‘deeply unfair’ to force women and girls to compete with men and boys in competitive sports,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said in announcing Wednesday’s lawsuit. “But not only is it ‘deeply unfair,’ it is also illegal under federal law.”
Since Trump’s return to office in January, the administration has aggressively pursued the issue of trans athletes, launching investigations into more than two dozen states, school districts, athletic associations and colleges and universities.
The University of Pennsylvania last week agreed to bar transgender athletes from its women’s sports teams and remove individual women’s swimming records set by Lia Thomas, a former student and the first trans woman to win an NCAA Division I championship in 2022.
In a letter addressed to the Penn community, J. Larry Jameson, the university’s president, wrote that refusing to sign the administration’s agreement “could have had significant and lasting implications for the University of Pennsylvania.”
The Trump administration previously suspended $175 million in federal contracts awarded to Penn. That money was released to the school after it signed the agreement.
The Justice Department has also taken legal action against Maine over its refusal to ban transgender girls from participating in girls’ school sports. Democratic Gov. Janet Mills called the suit “an unprecedented campaign to pressure the State of Maine to ignore the Constitution and abandon the rule of law.”
In April, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison (D) sued Trump and Bondi over threats to that state’s federal funding if it did not comply with Trump’s order to bar transgender students from participating on teams that match their gender identity.
Updated at 1:01 p.m. EDT
