Even Gavin Newsom admits that the current situation in scholastic competitions is “deeply unfair” to females. Now Newsom will get an opportunity to explain why he has taken exactly zero steps to rectify his admitted violation of Title IX regulations — in court.
The state of California had already filed suits against the Department of Education to unfreeze federal funding over this same issue. The Trump administration has turned those tables and filed suit today against both the state’s own DoE and its main intramural athletic body over the imposition of males in female competition and spaces. The suit reminds the court that the core purpose of Title IX was to protect and preserve educational opportunities for females by ensuring both equal access and protection against gender-directed hostile acts:
The Trump administration on Wednesday announced it will sue the California Department of Education (CDE) and California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) over Title IX violations.
The administration is asking for an injunction on the state’s policy allowing males to compete against females in sports – an issue that reached a fever pitch earlier this year when a transgender athlete won multiple events in girls’ track and field competitions.
California’s policies “eviscerate equal athletic opportunities for girls … they also require girls to share intimate spaces, such as locker rooms, with boys, causing a hostile educational environment that denies girls educational opportunities,” the lawsuit said.
“The results of these illegal policies are stark: girls are displaced from podiums, denied awards, and miss out on critical visibility for college scholarships and recognition.”
California has three problems here. First, the express purpose of Congress in passing Title IX was to protect access to education by sex — not by identity, or muh feelz, or preferred pronoun usage, but biological sex. It addressed a problem at that time of schools at all levels failing to provide the same amount of opportunities to females as they did to males in both educational access and athletics.
Furthermore, Title IX has been rigidly enforced on those lines for decades, with the threat of losing access to federal funds the tool by which compliance is secured. Schools have to provide an equal number of spots for athletic competition for females and males; in past decades, schools had to disband male teams to achieve that balance, even while arguing that male sports draw more spectator interest and revenue. Those balancing tests have been well-established for many years now, and allowing males to encroach on female sports grossly violates those definitions.
Second: Courts are not going to trade identity for sex when it comes to Title IX. The Joe Biden Regency attempted this late in its term, but it didn’t even survive a district-court test. A federal judge threw out that interpretation, finding that Congress clearly meant the term sex literally, and that Congress would have to amend the statute for any other interpretation. That case carries no precedential weight as Trump reversed the Biden policy and the case got mooted before appeal, but the Supreme Court has emphatically enforced the major-questions doctrine in the past few years. Federal courts will look at this situation and see the obvious Title IX violations under California’s practices, where males are now given far more opportunities than females, and females are essentially being intimidated out of private spaces in schools.
Third, and not least: Newsom has publicly admitted that the situation in his state is “deeply unfair” to females. And Newsom did so on his own podcast:
California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a pioneer for LGBTQ+ rights who decades ago upset leaders in his own party when he defied state law and issued marriage licenses to same-sex couples, suggested Democrats were in the wrong in allowing transgender athletes to participate in female college and youth sports.
“I think it’s an issue of fairness, I completely agree with you on that. It is an issue of fairness — it’s deeply unfair,” Newsom said in his debut podcast episode of “This is Gavin Newsom.” “I am not wrestling with the fairness issue. I totally agree with you.”
How will the respondents answer the charges by the Trump administration with Newsom’s admission on the record? The purpose of Title IX is to ensure the fairness that Newsom admits to denying females in California’s schools with their transgender practices. And Newsom’s absolute refusal to act in any way to restore compliance in the succeeding months since that admission — and to actively fight the federal DoE over that compliance — is going to look pretty actionable by a federal court. And that impression will likely get worse as the case works its way up the appellate chain, too.
In other words, this case is a loser for California, and especially for Greasy Gavin and his obvious aspirations to national office. Public opinion already skews sharply against these policies nationally, almost by 2:1 margins in the Harvard-Harris CAPS poll series each month (in June, 63/37 in favor of two-‘genders’ policies in gov’t, and 65/35 opposing males competing in female sports). Newsom’s best option is capitulation, but he seems incapable of wise choices or of being honest about his intentions, so … let the public legal- and political-beating begin.
