A fight for transgender inclusion in high school sports comes to Oakland
L.’s son was in preschool when the California Interscholastic Federation, which governs high school sports in the state, adopted a policy of gender inclusion in 2013.
That bylaw — “All students should have the opportunity to participate in CIF activities in a manner that is consistent with their gender identity” — has not always been implemented perfectly, but for more than a decade it has allowed transgender and nonbinary kids to openly play on teams of all kinds across the state.
L.’s son is now a junior at an Oakland public high school and, thanks to that policy, has been playing varsity sports for two years. Since his transition, he has been private about his gender identity, L. said, so she asked to be identified by only her first initial.
“He has always felt supported and welcomed and part of his team,” L. told The Oaklandside. In retrospect, L. said, she was “naively confident” that this welcome would continue. In recent years, the question of whether transgender students can compete as they choose has been swallowed up in a national culture war stoked by the Trump administration, with voices on the right advocating for bans of transgender athletes from the sports field, the locker room, the bathroom, the curriculum, and, arguably, from civic life.
The California Interscholastic Federation had been well ahead of the curve, adopting its inclusion policy several months before the California state legislature acted to protect the rights of transgender and gender nonconforming students — which itself was the first law of its kind in the nation.
Then came Donald Trump’s 2024 election, and a series of attacks. First, an investigation by Trump’s department of education, claiming CIF’s policy discriminated against girls — then a federal lawsuit threatening to withhold $44 billion from California’s Department of Education if CIF didn’t change the policy.
The day the investigation was publicly announced last May, the federation reacted, issuing a hasty “pilot process” just as high school track and field star AB Hernandez, an openly transgender girl, was on the verge of qualifying to compete in the state championship. For every event in which Hernandez was one of the 12 to qualify, CIF said, a 13th “biological female” would be allowed to compete; every medal she won would be shared by the next ranking “biological female.”
Arne Johnson, a leader of Rainbow Families Action, a community of Bay Area parents of transgender youth and their allies, said no one has been able to figure out who authored the pilot, which bypassed CIF’s normal deliberative processes.
Rebecca Brutlag, a spokesperson for CIF, did not respond to a query about how that process unfolded.
Hernandez, then a junior at Jurupa Valley High in Southern California, reached the podium three times last June, in the high jump, long jump, and triple jump; each time she had to share her medal. She was subjected to jeers; a plane flew over, pulling a banner that read “No boys in girls’ sports!”; Trump posted disparaging remarks on Truth Social.
To transgender athletes and their families, it felt like CIF had betrayed them. “It’s saying to the world, ‘You’re not a girl,’” Johnson said. “It’s very harsh to a single person and to all the trans kids watching.”
About a month after the track and field championships, the other shoe dropped: the Department of Justice filed its suit against CIF and the California Department of Education, citing Trump’s executive order on “gender ideology extremism” and Governor Gavin Newsom’s now notorious remarks to Charlie Kirk that the inclusion of trans girls in sports was “deeply unfair.” The suit’s core claim is that the federation’s inclusion policy violated Title IX — the 1972 civil rights law that had opened the floodgates for gender inclusion in the worlds of sports and higher education.
That clause, scholars say, was now being weaponized in the name of exclusion.
A message to ‘quietly accept discrimination’
On Friday, CIF’s leadership — dozens of athletic directors, coaches, principals, and superintendents from across the state — huddled at the Oakland Marriott’s conference center for their quarterly meeting. In practical haircuts and navy blazers, they listened silently as parents, grandparents, coaches, clergy and students from Rainbow Families Action stepped up to a podium to offer public comment, including L.’s testimony.
Their remarks captured the intense stress that these attacks have put on gender nonconforming kids — and what it feels like to become a political punching bag.
“We learned that there are vocal antitrans activists who have been coming to CIF meetings for at least a year, bombarding them with antitrans messaging,” L. told The Oaklandside. “While we applaud and appreciate CIF’s inclusive rule, we also want them to understand how harmful the pilot policy is and how positive sports are for our children.”
Activists with Rainbow Families Action gather inside the Oakland Marriott on Friday, April 24, 2026. Credit: Esther Kaplan/The Oaklandside
As it turned out, according to Johnson, who was there, a handful of activists from a group called Moms for Liberty had shown up at the Marriott to speak as well — in their case at an executive committee session on Thursday. One, according to those present, was a woman named Beth Bourne who heads up the organization’s Yolo County chapter and has become notorious for stripping at public meetings in an apparent effort to convey the experience of being in a school locker room. Johnson said she stripped to her underwear for CIF’s executive leadership as well; Bourne did not respond to a request for comment.
“All his life, sports have been a source of joy and belonging,” L. said of her son in her testimony, delivered anonymously. “He has been welcomed by his teammates, competitors and coaches alike. Being part of a boys team has been an affirming anchor, an external confirmation of his place in his community and of the gender that is an inherent part of who he is.”
She said that competing in CIF sports, he learned the federation’s core principles, of trustworthiness, respect, responsibility, fairness, caring and good citizenship. “But because he is trans, he’s learned some other things, too,” she said. “He’s learned [to] quietly accept discrimination directed at him. He’s learned that there are people who think his existence is indecent. He’s learned that there are adults who consider emotional harm to him and kids like him a price they are happy to pay to score a political point.”
Beth Hossfeld, a Bay Area family therapist and the grandmother of two transgender children, underlined the consequences of this kind of exclusion and stigma. “With regard to mental health,” she said, “we know that acceptance for who you are, belonging and full and equal participation are essential and foundational to the well-being of all youth, and this includes trans children.”
Student No. 3 speaks out
The Trump Justice Department’s lawsuit, filed in July of last year, lists five young people, labeled Students 1 through 5, whom the DOJ attorneys claimed had displaced “girl athletes.” Each athlete is misgendered in the complaint, and the descriptions are carelessly littered with identifying details, including the students’ school districts, sports, and specific events they competed in. The day after it was filed, the Family Research Council, a leading organization on the Christian right, published a story outing four of the five athletes by name — again misgendering each of them, and leveling accusations against one, a sprinter named Lily, that other students had found changing in the locker room with her “traumatizing.”
Lily and her father, Trevor Norcross, a leader of the Gala Pride & Diversity Center, were among the Bay Area families who offered testimony in Oakland on Friday.
“What is funny is that Lily goes out of her way to avoid locker rooms and bathrooms,” Trevor told The Oaklandside. He said that she’d taken PE during summer sessions to avoid changing in the school locker room, and that if she needs to use the restroom at school, she’ll typically wait until class starts and ask for a hall pass so she’s more likely to be alone there.
Lily was the first to speak on Friday, introducing herself by name and beginning, “I am Student No. 3 in the DOJ lawsuit.”
“Over the last year, I have dealt with an unimaginable amount of hate and harassment,” she said. “Multiple people at my school have threatened to murder me. I can’t go a single day without being harassed. But I still choose to run track.”“You’re probably confused why I don’t just quit,” she continued. “Running track is one of the only things I genuinely enjoy and feel comfortable and safe doing.… When I was leaving an extremely toxic and abusive friend group, track was there for me. When I was slandered on Fox News, track was there for me. No matter what, track was there for me, is there for me, and will be there for me. If you ban trans people from participating in sports…you are denying each and every one of your gender queer constituents the ability to feel safe and to be accepted by others in a time where harassment against trans people has reached unprecedented heights.”
Fish, a coach and former professional soccer player who competed for the Australian side Canberra United, came to deliver a message from Julie Foudy and Abby Wambach, former US national team players, Hall of Famers, and prominent figures in the fight for gender equity in sports.
“For months, people have been speaking for us, claiming that they are protecting girls’ sports, deciding whose bodies qualify for girlhood, and spinning the narrative that girls are fragile, inferior or in need of saving,” Fish said on their behalf. “We’re here to say we don’t need your saving….We need dignity, autonomy and safety. California has protected trans students’ rights to participate in sports for over a decade, and during that time, girls’ participation has grown. Inclusion does not weaken girls’ sports, it strengthens them.”
The CIF track and field finals are set to begin on May 29 in Clovis, and Hernandez, now a high school senior, is again expected to be competitive in several jumping events. So far, the federation has been quiet about whether it has left its controversial pilot policy behind and will allow Hernandez to compete equally.
Meanwhile, California attorney general Rob Bonta has asked a judge to dismiss the DOJ’s suit against CIF, noting that the government’s interpretation of Title IX has never been upheld by the Ninth Circuit and that Trump’s executive orders “cannot themselves amend Title IX.”
An Eighth Circuit decision in April, in another case related to sports inclusion, supports Bonta’s stance. “The problem with this argument,” Circuit Judge Ray Gruender wrote of the federal government’s position, “is that executive guidance and agency finding, in and of themselves, do not reflect settled law.”
In response to questions about the federation’s plans going forward, Brutlag, the CIF spokesperson, chose only to reiterate CIF’s standing inclusion policy.“The CIF provides students with the opportunity to belong, connect, and compete in education-based experiences in compliance with California law,” she wrote by email, “which permits students to participate in school programs and activities, including athletic teams and competitions, consistent with the student’s gender identity, irrespective of the gender listed on the student’s records.”
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