Overview

• The Kern County Board of Education voted on August 14 to adopt a nonbinding resolution that bans transgender females from competing in girls’ sports under a federal Title IX interpretation.
• The measure does not change athletic rules in the county’s 46 school districts but reflects local defiance of California’s 2013 law and CIF policy allowing gender identity participation.
• The U.S. Department of Justice has sued California seeking injunctions and threatening to withhold billions in federal education funds over its refusal to enforce a biology-based definition of sex.
• In June the Office for Civil Rights concluded that California violated Title IX and proposed a resolution agreement that the California Department of Education declined to sign.
• A Public Policy Institute of California poll shows that 65% of adults and 71% of public-school parents support requiring athletes to compete based on the sex they were assigned at birth.