Controversy growing over trans athletes

As change sweeps nation on issue, California continues to hold steady

When Cal, then a sophomore at Washington High in Fremont, began identifying as nonbinary, they had a decision to make: Keep running with the girls cross country team, or join the boys.

“Neither of those match my gender identity,” said Cal, who was assigned female at birth, “but I didn’t want to give up on this thing that made me really happy.”

Cal thought about quitting. Ultimately, they decided to continue running on the girls team.

Despite growing controversy around the country, California seems determined to continue allowing students like Cal to participate in school activities according to the gender

they choose. That has been state policy since 2013, when the state legislature and athletic governing body passed parallel policies protecting the rights of transgender students.

But in other states, there has been a wave of legislation designed to restrict participation in athletics by biological sex. And the issue gained new attention in California recently, when Caitlyn Jenner endorsed the restrictions in her run for governor.

“This is a question of fairness,” said Jenner, who won gold in the men’s decathlon at the 1976 Olympic Games as Bruce Jenner before coming out as a transgender woman four decades later. “That’s why I oppose biological boys who are trans competing in girls’ sports in school. It just isn’t fair. And we have to protect girls’ sports in our schools.”

Jenner’s comments echoed the language of many bills introduced this year by legislatures in other states — 31 in total, according to the American Civil Liberties Union. Bills in five states — Arkansas, Idaho, Mississippi, Tennessee and West Virginia — have been signed into law.

When Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves signed into law the second such bill in March, he said on Twitter that he did so “to ensure young girls are not forced to compete against biological males.”

California tackled this issue in February 2013. That’s when former Assemblymember Tom Ammiano, D-San Francisco, introduced AB 1266, a bill that sought to guarantee transgender students the right to participate in school activities in accordance with their gender identity. Ron Nocetti, the executive director of the California Interscholastic Federation. the state’s governing body for athletics, said the CIF began crafting its own policy then in lockstep with Ammiano’s office.

Six months later, in August 2013, Gov. Jerry Brown approved the bill and CIF’s member schools voted unanimously to add language to its bylaws to reflect that “all students should have the opportunity to participate in CIF activities.

Lindsay Hecox ran cross country and track as a high school boy in Southern California. She began to transition to female after leaving the state to start college at Boise State University. Now her desire to compete on the women’s teams at BSU has run up against Idaho HB 500, the country’s first ban on trans girls in female sports.

“I don’t know how I would have gotten through high school if I didn’t have my running teams,” Hecox said in a recent PBS interview. “I think I’m rightfully pissed off. They word it so that I’m ‘othered’ and made different when it doesn’t need to be that way.”

The CIF is one of 15 state athletic associations — Washington was the first, in 2009 — that give trans students the right to choose their team regardless of gender assigned at birth, according to the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network.

“When people want to say this is a political issue, that is definitely not how CIF looks at this,” Nocetti said. “We’re not just doing this to be in compliance with state law. We have this bylaw because we believe it’s the right thing to do.”

The American Academy of Pediatrics advises trans youth be given the opportunity to participate in sports according to the gender with which they identify.

“This argument that trans people are somehow going to ruin sports as we know it is not based on anything connected to fact,” said Dr. Vinnie Pompei, who conducted a survey of LGBTQ youth in California for the Human Rights Campaign Foundation.

Dr. Jack Turban, a fellow in child and adolescent psychiatry at the Stanford University School of Medicine, went a step further. In an email to this news organization, Turban wrote: “It seems quite clear that these legislative proposals are driven by transphobia rather than any real issue in women’s sports.”

Said Cal, the high school sophomore who now is a senior at UC Santa Cruz: “Some people get scholarships for being really, really good at sports, but a lot of them also have similar physical advantages other people don’t have and that doesn’t get scrutinized in nearly the same way, which I think suggests that there’s something else going on — that we scrutinize trans people in a way that is different from other types of physical difference.”

There is no database that tracks transgender participation in high school athletics in California. In two years leading the CIF, Nocetti said he knows of fewer than 10 instances.

Under the current policy, students are asked to affirm their gender identity before a panel of medical experts and CIF officials. In reality, Nocetti said, trans youth who want to participate in sports do so at will; schools only contact CIF to ensure they are following the bylaw correctly.

Almost a decade after the bylaw was written, Nocetti said the CIF “need(s) to take a critical look at this bylaw to make sure it still meets with how things are actually happening in practice in our schools ...

“Right now, the way our schools handle this is, if a student and a family come to a school and say that our child identifies with a gender that is different from their birth certificate and want to play sports, our schools are allowing that.”

Pompei said he doubted every school district in California was compliant with AB 1266 and the CIF policy. His survey showed that only 1 in 5 trans youth were called by their affirmed gender identity in school, a protection guaranteed under AB 1266.

Turban, the Stanford doctor, said most of the kids he speaks with, including cisgender girls, are “appalled” by the recent wave of legislation and rhetoric surrounding it.

According to a recent survey by the Trevor Project, 42% of LGBTQ youth seriously considered attempting suicide in the past year, including more than half of transgender and nonbinary youth. A full 94% reported that recent politics negatively impacted their mental health.

“Trans youth are hearing powerful politicians say that their identities are invalid and that they are a threat to their peers,” Turban said. “Though they may know this is not true, hearing it over and over takes a serious toll and can drive anxiety and depression. As a therapist who treats these young people, it is heartbreaking to see.”