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    California violated Title IX by allowing trans athletes on girls’ teams, Trump administration says

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    The Trump administration has found that the California department of education and the state’s high school sports federation violated civil rights law by allowing transgender girls to compete on girls sports teams.The federal education department announced the finding Wednesday and proposed a resolution that would require California to bar transgender women from women’s sports and strip transgender athletes of records, titles and awards. It’s the latest escalation in the Republican administration’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.“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,” Linda McMahon, the education secretary, 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 in education.California education and sports officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment Wednesday.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 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 Joe 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.Under federal guidelines, California’s education office and the sports federation have 10 days to come into compliance or risk enforcement action.The 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. More

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      For Tennessee’s Transgender Families, Supreme Court Ruling Was Bitter, but Expected

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      The state has been a leader in the rollback of L.G.B.T.Q. rights.There had been cause for joy this June. There were events timed with Pride Month, when families and friends gathered with rainbow tattoos and flags for the annual celebration of L.G.B.T.Q. life. And there was an unexpected legal victory when a federal judge extended a temporary injunction on a federal policy requiring passports to reflect the sex on a person’s original birth certificate.Then on Wednesday, the Supreme Court upheld Tennessee’s ban on transition treatment for transgender youth, dealing a bitter setback to their families and reviving fear about other limits that may come for L.G.B.T.Q. people in the state.For many transgender people, children and their families in Tennessee, it was not necessarily an unexpected outcome given the vitriol they have faced in recent years.The state has been at the forefront of a rollback on L.G.B.T.Q. rights as its General Assembly, with an entrenched Republican supermajority, has barred changes to gender identification on driver’s licenses, limited where drag shows can take place and prevented transgender students from using public school bathrooms that fit their identities.“I’m not surprised” at the ruling, said Eli Givens, who at 18 had testified against the ban. “I really want to be. Ever since I started all of this in 2023, it’s been whiplash every single day. There’s just always a new decision, someone saying something about the community.”Receiving treatment as a teenager “was a new chance at life for me,” Mx. Givens, 20, added. “I could savor things in a way I never could before. Everything kind of made sense and fell into place.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Supreme Court Case on Trans Care Ruled Against My Daughter

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      There is something incredibly surreal about finding your family at the center of a landmark Supreme Court decision, from the robes and the formality to the long, red velvet curtains behind the justices. No mother imagines that her everyday fight to do right by her child would land her there.My daughter, L.W., came out as transgender late in 2020. She was just shy of 13. Four and a half years later, she is thriving, healthy and happy after pursuing evidence-based gender-affirming care. But the very care that is improving her life became a primary political target of the Republican supermajority in our home state, Tennessee. When the legislature banned my daughter’s care in 2023, we fought back by suing the state. Today, we found out that we lost that case when the Supreme Court ruled, 6-3, to uphold Tennessee’s ban on such care.I am beside myself. Our heartfelt plea was not enough. The compelling, expert legal arguments by our lawyers at the American Civil Liberties Union and Lambda Legal were not enough. I had to face my daughter and tell her that our last hope is gone. She’s angry, scared and hurt that the American system of democracy that we so put on a pedestal didn’t work to protect her.My family did not start this journey to land in Washington in front of that white marble hall of justice. We ended up there through parental and civic duty. My and my husband’s demands in our lawsuit against the ban felt quite basic: Let us do our job as parents. Let us love and care for our daughter in the best way we and our doctors know how. Don’t let our child’s very existence be a political wedge issue. Being a teenager is hard enough. Being a parent of a teenager is hard enough.Raising a transgender kid in Tennessee, we know that not everyone understands people like her or her health care — and that’s OK. We don’t need to agree on everything. But we do need our fundamental rights respected.I have devoted myself to finding our daughter consistent care in one state after another. The nightmare of our disrupted life pales in comparison to the nightmare of losing access to the health care that has allowed our daughter to thrive. After Tennessee passed its ban, we traveled to another provider in a different state. After that state passed a ban, we moved on to another one. We are now on our fourth state. The five-hour drive each way, taking time off work and school, is hard, but thankfully, we found a clinic and pharmacy that take our insurance.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      As Trump Debates Iran Action, the Meaning of ‘America First’ Is on the Line

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      As President Trump ponders involving the United States in Israel’s attacks on Iran, the G.O.P. faces a thorny question: What does “America first” really mean?A decade ago, President Trump electrified conservatives with his promises to get the United States out of foreign entanglements and to always put — say it with me — “America first.”As he weighs involving American planes and weaponry in Israel’s attacks on Iran, a brawl has broken out in the Republican Party over what “America first” really means.I wrote today about how a swath of Trump’s base is in an uproar over the president’s increasing openness to deploying U.S. warplanes — and perhaps even 30,000-pound bunker-busting bombs — against Iran in an effort to help Israel finish off its nuclear program.“Everyone is finding out who are real America First/MAGA and who were fake and just said it bc it was popular,” Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia posted on X over the weekend. She added, “Anyone slobbering for the U.S. to become fully involved in the Israel/Iran war is not America First/MAGA.”The anger extends well beyond Greene’s social-media account, to cable television and the podcast feeds of the likes of Tucker Carlson, Steve Bannon and Candace Owens. They are passionately arguing that intervening in Iran would contravene Trump’s long-held promise to steer the nation out of, not into, foreign entanglements, and threaten to fracture his whole coalition.It’s a remarkable fight, and one that raises a bigger question about who is really the keeper of Trump’s political flame. Is it the non-interventionists who have been there from the start, or the Republican hawks — the Senator Lindsey Grahams of the world — who are now sticking by the president?We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Federal Judge Certifies Class Action for Transgender People Seeking Passports

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      A preliminary injunction blocking the State Department from enforcing a new passport limit extends to all trans passport seekers.A federal judge in Boston granted class-action status to transgender and nonbinary Americans on Tuesday in a lawsuit challenging a U.S. State Department policy that requires passports to reflect only the holder’s sex recorded on their original birth certificate.The order extends a preliminary injunction blocking the State Department from enforcing the policy against six plaintiffs to apply to all class members who apply for or update passports while the case proceeds. In the earlier order from April, U.S. District Judge Julia E. Kobick concluded that the passport policy likely violates the Fifth Amendment’s equal protection guarantee because it discriminates based on sex and is “rooted in irrational prejudice toward transgender Americans.”The State Department filed an appeal of the preliminary injunction last week.The government maintains that it has a strong interest in passports that accurately reflect the holder’s sex. The State Department adopted the new policy earlier this year to comply with an executive order from President Trump directing all government agencies to limit official recognition of transgender identity and mandating that federal documents reflect what it termed the “immutable biological classification as either male or female.”In court documents, plaintiffs argued that a mismatch between the sex listed on their passport and their gender identity puts them at risk of suspicion and hostility that other Americans do not face. During the first weeks of Mr. Trump’s administration, several plaintiffs received passports with an “F” or “M” marker contrary to the one they had requested. Another learned that selecting an “X” marker, indicating a nonbinary gender identity, was no longer an option, though it had been allowed since 2022.The government argued against certifying trans and nonbinary passport holders as a legal class in the case, contending that gender identity is subjective and that a class-wide injunction would create an undue administrative burden.Judge Kobick, who was nominated by former President Joseph R. Biden Jr., found that those claims did not outweigh significant harm faced by transgender and nonbinary passport holders. She noted that plaintiffs in the case had described being forced to “effectively ‘out’ themselves every time they presented their passports,” leading to anxiety and fear safety fears.“These are the types of injuries that cannot adequately be measured or compensated by money damages or a later-issued remedy,’’ she wrote. More

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      A Trump Official Threatens to Sue California Schools Over Trans Athletes

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      A letter from the assistant attorney general for civil rights, Harmeet K. Dhillon, said that allowing trans athletes to compete in high school sports was unconstitutional.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.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in US Politics

      Teen trans athlete at center of rightwing attacks wins track events in California

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      A teenage transgender athlete in California, who has been at the center of widespread political attacks by rightwing pundits and the Trump administration, won in two track events over the weekend. The 16-year-old athlete, AB Hernandez, tied for first place alongside two other athletes in the high jump, and tied for first place in the triple jump.This comes as the Trump administration threatened to withhold federal funding from California for allowing trans athletes to compete in girls’ sports.The meet took place days after the California Interscholastic Federation, the governing body for high school sports in the state, changed its rules. Now, if a transgender athlete places in a girls’ event, the athlete who finishes just behind will also receive the same place and medal.Despite protests at the meet, the athletes expressed joy during the meet, multiple outlets reported.“Sharing the podium was nothing but an honor,” another high school athlete said to the San Francisco Chronicle. “Although the publicity she’s been receiving has been pretty negative, I believe she deserves publicity because she’s a superstar. She’s a rock star. She’s representing who she is.”View image in fullscreenHernandez finished the high jump with a mark of 5ft 7in (1.7 meters), the Associated Press reported, with no failed attempts. The two co-winners also cleared that height after each logged a failed attempt. The three shared the first-place win, smiling as they stepped together onto the podium.Hernandez received first place in the triple jump, sharing the top spot with an athlete who trailed by just more than a half-meter, the AP said. Earlier in the afternoon, Hernandez placed second in the long jump.Hernandez and her participation in the meet brought national attention and attacks by the Trump administration. She has become the target of a national, rightwing campaign to ban trans athletes from youth sports. The justice department said it would investigate the California Interscholastic Federation and the school district to determine whether they violated federal sex-discrimination law.The federation’s rule change reflects efforts to find a middle ground in the debate over trans girls’ participation in high school sports. They announced the change after Trump threatened to pull federal funding from California unless it bars trans athletes from competing on girls’ teams. But the federation said it decided on the change before the Trump threats.Hernandez’s participation in the sport is allowed by a 2013 state law, stating that students can compete in the category reflecting their gender identity.At least 24 states have laws on the books barring transgender women and girls from participating in certain women’s or girls’ sports competitions, the AP reported. More

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      in Elections

      What We Know About the Conflict Over a Trans Athlete in a California Track Meet

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      The final day of the high school championships is Saturday, and the athlete was the top performer in three preliminary events, adding to the national debate about fairness and inclusion.A transgender girl in California qualified for this week’s state high school track and field meet, and her inclusion in the two-day event has angered people who do not believe that trans girls should compete in girls’ events. They believe that trans girls hold a physical advantage and say that allowing them to take part is unfair.Her participation has fueled a political debate that has reached the White House: President Trump has threatened to pull federal funding from the state if it lets the trans girl, AB Hernandez, compete at the meet. Civil rights advocates have denounced the threat as bullying behavior.Now the eyes of the president, the governor, conservative activists and transgender rights groups will be on the meet, which began Friday in Clovis, near Fresno. It’s arguably the most competitive high school track and field meet in the nation.Here’s what to know:What events is the trans girl competing in?Hernandez qualified for the meet in three events: the high jump, the long jump and the triple jump. On Friday, she finished as the top qualifier in all three events and advanced to Saturday’s finals. There, medals typically go to the top nine athletes. She is one of the favorites in the long jump and the triple jump.What is the gist of the debate?People who are against trans girls’ competing in girls’ events believe that those athletes hold unfair advantages over other competitors. Athletes who were born male, they say, have a physiological edge — including muscle mass and bone length — that they retain even after their transition. They think that physical edge makes it harder for all girls to have an equal chance at making teams, qualifying for meets and winning.In California, trans girls have had the right to compete in girls’ events since 2013, when a law was passed that said students could participate in school sports in the category that matched their gender identity.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Gay-Themed Forum Is Canceled in Malaysia

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      The public criticism from the government and online attacks that prompted its organizers to back down are the latest examples of the increasing influence of religious conservatism.A planned forum on L.G.B.T.Q.-related themes in Malaysia was indefinitely postponed after online attacks by the public and harsh criticism by a government official. It’s the latest instance of how the government of Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim has taken a harder line in an effort to shore up support among the country’s Muslim majority.Malaysia’s Parliament now includes the conservative Islamist party, Parti Islam SeMalaysia, which is the largest party in the lower house. Its growing influence has increased pressure on the government to adopt more conservative positions, with the party accusing Mr. Anwar’s administration of failing to safeguard Islamic values.In the past, Mr. Anwar has expressed a degree of tolerance toward the L.G.B.T.Q. community.“Muslims and non-Muslims alike, there is a consensus — they do not accept this,” he said in a 2023 interview with CNN, referring to public displays of affection by gay people. “But do we then go and harass them? That is a different subject. I do not approve of any attempt to harass.”The workshop, titled “Pride Care: Queer Stories & Sexual Health Awareness” and organized by the youth wing of a small opposition party, was to take place next month. Efforts to publicize the event on social media quickly went viral, prompting hateful comments and death threats by the public. Many posts tagged the Royal Malaysian Police, urging them to investigate the event.The government of Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim has taken a harder line against homosexuality in an effort to shore up its support among the country’s Muslim majority.Mohd Rasfan/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesOn Wednesday, Mohd Na’im Mokhtar, the government’s religious affairs minister, described the planned gathering as a promotion of “deviant culture.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More