A Trump Official Threatens to Sue California Schools Over Trans Athletes

The U.S. Department of Justice on Monday threatened legal action against California public schools if they continued to allow trans athletes to compete in high school sports, calling the students’ participation unconstitutional and giving the schools a week to comply.

In a letter sent to public school districts in the state, Harmeet K. Dhillon, assistant attorney general for civil rights, said the California Interscholastic Federation’s 2013 bylaw that allowed trans athletes to compete violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution and discriminated against athletes on the basis of sex.

“Scientific evidence shows that upsetting the historical status quo and forcing girls to compete against males would deprive them of athletic opportunities and benefits because of their sex,” Ms. Dhillon wrote, referring to trans girls as males.

Elizabeth Sanders, a spokeswoman for the California Department of Education, said on Monday that the department was preparing to send guidance to the state’s school districts on how to respond, and that it would do so on Tuesday.

The Justice Department’s move came two days after a trans girl won championships in two girls’ events at the California state track and field meet, and less than a week after President Trump decried her inclusion in the competition, saying that he would cut federal funding to the state if it let her participate.

At the meet, held over two days in Clovis, Calif., the trans girl, AB Hernandez, won the girls’ high jump and triple jump, and also finished second in the long jump for Jurupa Valley High School, in what is arguably the most competitive high school meet in the nation. In a statement provided by the group TransFamily Support Services, her mother, Nereyda Hernandez, said that it was her daughter’s third year of competing in sports.