Weeks after California Governor Gavin Newsom admitted that it was “deeply unfair” for transgender-identifying athletes play on sports teams according to chosen sex, California Democrats unanimously blocked a bill that would require sex-segregated sports teams and facilities in schools.
“Assembly Democrats care more about allowing biological boys into girls sports and locker rooms than protecting our daughters — this defies all common sense,” Assemblyman Bill Essayli, who called for a vote on the bill, which he authored, said. “The vast majority of Californians and all Americans agree: keep boys out of girls sports. Assembly Democrats are radically out of touch with common sense Californians and the voters will hold them accountable to restore justice and fairness in girls sports.”
The measure would require a student’s participation in sex-segregated sports and use of sex-segregated facilities such as bathrooms and locker rooms be based on the student’s sex.
Debate over whether or not transgender-identifying students should be able to use facilities that do not correspond to their biological sex has mounted since President Donald Trump signed an executive order barring men from women’s sports and spaces.
Since Trump signed his executive order, at least two cases of female students feeling endangered by the presence of a male in their changing spaces, have gone viral.
Most recently, in Wisconsin, two high-school girls were penalized for refusing to share locker rooms with a male classmate during a physical education class. When the girls protested the male’s presence in their locker room, they were told that was considered “bullying,” and “not to worry about it.”
Earlier this month, an Illinois mother accused school officials of trying to force her 13-year-old daughter to change clothes in front of a male classmate. Because the male student identified as female, administrators told the mother Nicole Georgas, he could use whichever locker room aligned with his chosen gender.
“The girls just want their privacy and they want their locker room back,” Georgas said at a school board meeting. “There are gender neutral options. This is my daughter’s story, and the story of many other young girls who have been forced at the difficult age to do something they know and most adults know is wrong.”
Although Newsom has not commented on pending California legislation that would disallow men from competing in women’s sports or entering women’s locker rooms, he agreed with right-wing influencer Charlie Kirk on a podcast recently that the issue is one of “fairness.” ”
“It is an issue of fairness. It’s deeply unfair,” Newsom said. “I’m not wrestling with the fairness issue. I totally agree with you.”
“I revere sports. And so the issue of fairness is completely legit,” Newsom said. “There’s also a humility and a grace, that these poor people are more likely to commit suicide, have anxiety and depression. So both things I can hold in my hand. How can we address this issue with the kind of decency that I think is inherent in you but not always expressed on the issue, but at the same time deal with the unfairness?”
In 2023 in Riverside, California, a transgender-identifying male beat up a female student. After the event, one high-school student told her school board that “it was infuriating when I had seen the video on social media, but what was detrimental to this was the fact that this man is and has been using the women’s restroom and locker room.”
“Firstly, the question we must address is why are we affirming the mental confusion of this boy and putting the safety of women in jeopardy by allowing mentally confused men to use the women’s spaces?” she added.
Also in Riverside, two female high-school students filed a federal lawsuit last year alleging that a biological male had ousted them from the girls cross-country team. So-called “inclusive” policies “unfairly restrict” the girls’ “freedom of expression and deny them fair and equal access to athletic opportunities,” the lawsuit claimed.