Concerned parents, student-athletes, and others attended the California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) meeting Thursday, where they appealed to the regulatory group to protect women from men who try to compete against them in sports.
“This is a matter of women’s safety,” Jordan Brace, a cross-country student-athlete from St. Francis High School, told CIF officials, according to a Fox News report. Brace asked the state officials, “How many more injuries, which are sometimes permanent, will it take for everyone to realize how important it is for women to feel safe and for young girls to feel like they have fair competition.”
“Allowing a biological male to compete against a female athlete that does not have the same kind of build or physical abilities is completely unfair and unsafe for women, and that can lead to so, so, so many injuries,” Brace continued, and explained to the officials:
I want to know that I’m facing … someone who’s the same gender as me. … That I’m not being beat by someone in a race that has more physical capabilities than me, that’s naturally going to be faster than me, more muscular. I don’t think that anyone, anywhere, any young women, should have to deal with that, should have to fear that they aren’t safe or that they are being discriminated against in their sport.
There are many examples of young women who have been injured during competition with men who claim to be women and have been allowed to compete in women’s sports. During his March 4 address to Congress, President Trump honored Payton McNabb, a former girls’ high school volleyball player who “suffered a concussion, brain bleed, and permanent whiplash during her junior year” after a trans player spiked the ball on her face.
The CIF has continued to defy the “No Men In Women’s Sports Executive Order” signed by President Donald Trump on February 5. The San Francisco Chronicle announced the same day that “leaders of scholastic sports say they will continue to follow state law ensuring trans student athletes can participate with teams corresponding with their gender identity.”
However, California Republicans have joined the fight. The Fox News report noted that state lawmakers “have introduced two bills to block trans athletes from competing in girls’ sports”:
California Assemblyman Bill Essayli introduced one such bill Feb. 14, while fellow Assembly member Kate Sanchez announced Jan. 7 she is introducing a bill to ban trans athletes from competing in girls and women’s sports.
Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) appeared to soften his opinion on the issue, as he told Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk on March 6 that the issue of men in women’s sports is “an issue of fairness — it’s deeply unfair”:
“I am not wrestling with the fairness issue,” Newsom added. “I totally agree with you. I revere sports. So, the issue of fairness is completely legit.”
Newsom went to on to explain to Kirk that he balances the “issue of fairness” for women athletes with the emotional concerns of transgender individuals, and the knowledge that, as the governor stated, “these poor people are more likely to commit suicide, have anxiety and depression and the way that people talk down to vulnerable communities is an issue that I have a hard time with as well.”
However, at Thursday’s CIF meeting, parents brought the argument back to the young women trying to compete fairly in California sports.
“Good intentions do not make good policy. Good intentions do not absolve you from being complicit in robbing the girls of California of fair competition and single-sex privacy,” Riece Morris, a mom of five student-athletes in California state schools, told the CIF during the meeting Thursday, according to the report.
“Sacrificing girls’ sports by admitting boys was never a good idea. It was never going to last. So, I’m asking you to read the room, read the data, and do the right thing. Do not let your legacy be that you had to be dragged kicking and screaming to do the right thing for girls after everyone else. Please stand up now and do the right thing,” Morris concluded.
