A high school runner is suing California for being replaced on her cross country team by a transgender athlete and being compared to a Nazi by her own athletic director for wearing a T-shirt that read “Save Girls Sports.”
Taylor Starling, a 16-year-old student at Martin Luther King High School in Riverside, California, along with her teammate, Kaitlyn Slavin, filed suit against the district in federal district court last November. Now they’ve added California Attorney General Rob Bonta to the lawsuit.
The filing comes after President Donald Trump issued an executive order in February mandating federally funded schools have their athletes compete in events based on their biological gender as opposed to their “identity.”
WATCH — President Trump Signs Executive Order Banning Men from Women’s Sports:
The suit also asks the court to declare that the school district has “violated Title IX by failing to provide equal treatment, benefits and opportunities for girls in athletic competition.”
Also cited was the high school’s speech code. The suit seeks to overturn language that prohibits clothing “likely to create a hostile or intimidating environment based on any protected class.”
The clothing issue and Nazi comparisons came after Starling and other parents and students began wearing the T-shirts on school grounds. The school banned the shirts last November, with its athletic director reportedly calling the clothing “analogous to a student who wore a shirt with a swastika in front of a Jewish student” and comparing the wearers to “Nazis.”
Starling now says the director’s false comparison has backfired and rallied more local support, adding that her family and friends also have her back.
“I’ve already been called that by the athletic director, so by now, I’m kind of used to it,” Starling said. “But it was a shock to everyone else, because he was also calling everyone else Nazis. So, I think that caused a big reaction from everybody, and they were more willing to speak up against that.”
Starling also spoke to state lawmakers earlier this month. Here she is at that hearing.
WATCH: California high school student Taylor Starling tells state lawmakers she was removed from her cross-country team and replaced with a biological male transfer student. pic.twitter.com/5Aby114WeU
— Off The Press (@OffThePress1) April 2, 2025
Here testimony apparently did not sway enough lawmakers. As Breitbart reported in early April, the California legislature rejected two bills seeking to ban men from participating in women’s sports, with some lawmakers calling it “cruel.”
Starling also cites cruelty. She told Fox Digital, “I felt angry when I was removed from my varsity team because I knew the requirements were changed for him because he is transgender. I felt like my sacrifice, hard work, and dedication didn’t matter to my school administrators because I am a girl. It was easy for them to push me aside and that hurt.”
Contributor Lowell Cauffiel is the best-selling author of Below the Line and nine other crime novels and nonfiction titles. See lowellcauffiel.com for more.
