Not all of California has gone off the deep end. Kern County, a central California county centered on Bakersfield, with a population of approximately 900,000, is slightly more centered than much of the once-Golden state. On Tuesday, the Kern County Board of Education voted to approve a measure to comply with the federal government's interpretation of Title IX.
In other words: No more boys in girls' sports in Kern County.
The Kern County Board of Education approved a resolution to comply with the federal definition of Title IX.
The vote comes amid a feud and lawsuit between the state and President Donald Trump's administration over the issue of males competing in girls' sports. Now, at least one school board has opted to side with Trump over the state authorities that have rigorously committed to keeping males in girls' sports this year.
Every journey begins with a single step, although we should note that Kern County isn't San Francisco, Alameda, or Los Angeles County; Kern County, in the Central Valley, voted for Donald Trump in the 2024 election by a wide margin, 59.3 percent to Harris's 38.2 percent. A quick look at a 2024 election map of California reveals that Kern County isn't alone in swinging to the Republican ticket that year.
Since that election, President Trump has been focused on this issue:
Trump signed an executive order to ban males from girls' and women's sports nationally back in February, but California was one of the first states to publicly defy the order. The defiance enabled multiple incidents of trans athletes competing in high school girls' basketball, cross-country and track and field in 2025, as California schools were made to continue following the state law that has protected trans inclusion in sports dating back to 2014.
The issue came to a head during the spring high school track and field postseason, when transgender athlete AB Hernandez of Jurupa Valley High School made a run for two girls' state titles.
It's looking a lot like sanity is finally going to carry the day in this debate.
Read More: 'Transgender' Runner Suing Princeton for Exclusion From Women-Only Event
This practice is, of course, hideously unfair to the girls involved. There's a reason that our nation's schools separate boys and girls, men and women, in sports; boys and men have innate advantages in speed, strength, and stamina. Boys and men have greater cardio-pulmonary capacity, more fast-twitch muscle fibers, and greater resistance to injury; their skeletons are stronger, more robust, with heavier long bones.
What's more, these differences exist from birth. They may widen after puberty, but they are always there; all I have to do as a reminder of that is to look at our youngest grandson, who we call "Moose," who has a chest like a beer keg and hands like grapples. He's strong and tough, always ready for an outside rough-and-tumble - and he's five.
These differences are great enough to constitute a difference not in degree, but in kind. That's why we have separate sports teams for boys and girls, for men and women. That's why I remain cynical about these boys and men who claim to be "transgender" and demand to be allowed to play on girls' and women's teams. It's not gender dysphoria. It's cheating; it's a ploy by which a mediocre male athlete can gain awards and titles he's not properly entitled to.
Kern County has done the right thing here. We watch the ongoing lawsuits against more defiant counties with great interest, but it looks like the arc of history, on this issue at least, is trending back toward sanity.
Editor's Note: President Trump is leading America into the "Golden Age" as Democrats try desperately to stop it.
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