Trans high school athlete competes in California finals in shadow of protests, Trump funding threats
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The transgender high school athlete whose participation in this weekend's California track and field championships prompted President Donald Trump to threaten to remove state funding is competing in Saturday's final round.
A.B. Hernandez, a public high school junior in Southern California, placed first in long jump, high jump and triple jump in the preliminary round Friday as a group protested her ability to compete, holding signs reading, 'Save Girls Sports' and cheered while an airplane with a banner reading, 'No Boys in Girls' Sports' flew over the stadium.
'I don't think that having a male in female competition is fair competition,' one protester told CNN, who misgendered A.B. while saying as an athlete, she should compete in her 'biological field.' Most parents who came with their children to the meet, however, said they don't want the issue to be politicized and want the focus to remain on the competition.
Her qualification led the high school sports governing body to allow more cisgender girls, whose gender identity conforms with their sex assigned at birth, to compete, as A.B. earned her place in the championships after finishing first in the triple jump and long jump at last weekend's Southern Section Masters Meet, which led to criticism from some in the community who said she prevented lower-ranked competitors from advancing.
The top 12 finishers in each event in Friday's preliminary round advanced to Saturday's state finals in Clovis. A.B. was ranked first in both long jump and triple jump, and 14th in high jump entering the championships, according to Mile Split California data.
The California Interscholastic Federation announced a new policy on Tuesday which only applies to this weekend's meet, allowing 'biological female' student athletes who would otherwise have earned a qualifying mark – if not for the participation of trans students – an automatic entry to the finals.
The same day, Trump said on Truth Social, 'large scale' federal funding 'will be held back, maybe permanently, if the Executive Order on this subject matter is not adhered to,' referencing his February directive titled, 'Keeping Men Out of Women's Sports.'
A day after Trump's announcement, the Justice Department said it was investigating whether California's School Success and Opportunity Act violates the federal Title IX law prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sex in education programs or activities receiving federal money. The California law in part prohibits public schools from blocking transgender students from participating in school sports.
The federal agency sent the announcement in letters to the California Attorney General and the superintendent of public instruction, as well as the California Interscholastic Federation and the Jurupa Unified School District, where A.B. attends high school.
The school district said it is required to follow California law and the state federation's policy regarding school athletics.
The office of Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat who recently has broken from many progressives' position on the issue and others, said the governing body's pilot rule is 'reasonable.' Newsom, in a March podcast episode with conservative activist Charlie Kirk, called the issue of trans athletes competing in sports 'deeply unfair.'
With trans athletes' participation in girls' and women's sports a legal, political and cultural debate stoked by the political right, the White House has tried to use federal money to get states to align their policies with its ideology.
At the track meet, one coach from Redondo Beach told CNN affiliate KCAL 'it's not easy' for A.B. to be competing.
The coach said of CIF's pilot policy: 'The solution they came up with is very good. They're allowing her to compete but not displacing the other athletes. I think they came up with a good solution for a difficult, challenging question. The problem is it's not going away,' according to the KCAL report.
One protester told the outlet what CIF is 'doing wrong is allowing boys in girls' sports. I would like to see the three categories. Let them have their own category… These girls don't have a fair playing field. They're going against a boy,' the woman told KCAL, adding she believes A.B. has a 'biological advantage.'
At the core of disagreements over access is whether trans women have unfair physical athletic advantages. Few trans athletes have reached elite levels of sports competition and even fewer have taken home top prizes, but their limited success has fueled the growing movement to ban them from participating on teams consistent with their gender identity.
Research on trans people's athletic performance is scarce, and there have been no large-scale scientific studies on the topic or on how hormone therapies may affect their performance in specific sport categories, such as running or wrestling.
Trans athletes and advocates say trans people deserve the right to compete alongside their peers and reap the proven social, physical and mental benefits of sports.
This weekend's meet wasn't the first time A.B. faced backlash as she competed.
At another competition earlier this month, she was met with heckling and protesters in the crowd as she was accompanied by campus security guards and deputies from the Orange County Sheriff's Department, according to Keinan Briggs, who coaches two athletes who placed lower than A.B. in last weekend's competition.
While many parents and community members are upset, Briggs agrees with those who believe A.B. should compete because there is not a specific category for transgender athletes, he said.
In an interview with Capital & Main earlier this month, A.B. said she has the support of most of the athletes she competes against: 'Girls were just shocked that people would actually come to do that, and really bully a child.'
'I've trained so hard. I mean, hours of conditioning every day, five days a week. Every day since November, three hours after school. And then all of summer, no summer break for me,' she told Capital & Main. 'A few people think I'm brave and strong and they hope to be like me one day. I say, don't just hope, make it happen.'
'I'm still a child. You're an adult, and for you to act like a child shows how you are as a person,' said A.B., whose family declined to comment for this story when contacted by CNN.
A.B.'s mother Nereyda Hernandez said this month on Instagram her daughter's identity 'doesn't give her an advantage; it gives her courage. It takes immense bravery to show up, compete, and be visible in a world that often questions your very right to exist, let alone to participate.'
Both A.B. and her mother spoke at a Placentia-Yorba Linda Unified School District board of education meeting on April 8. Nereyda Hernandez told the board A.B. is competing at the high school level in girls' sports in accordance with the law but has faced harassment and stalking.
'We're supposed to treat all children equal, and we're supposed to protect our children,' the mother said, adding the team does not feel 'unsafe.'
A.B. referenced the Save Girls Sports group at the meeting, saying: 'If you are going to save someone, it should be the girls on my team who all love me and support me, and they've told me over and over again that they want me on this team.'
CNN's Samantha Waldenberg, Stephanie Elam, Jen Christensen, and Elizabeth Wolfe contributed to this report.
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