Trump, not trans athletes, is the greatest threat to girls sports | Opinion
Never mind what you hear from grandstanding Fresno County politicians or read in the right-wing media.
The greatest threat to the future of girls sports is not transgender athletes, including the section champion who qualified in three jumping events at this weekend’s CIF State Track and Field Championships in Clovis.
The greatest threat to girls sports is Donald Trump. And by extension, anyone who supports Trump policies that disemboweled the Department of Education.
How can that be, some of you are undoubtedly asking yourselves. Didn’t President Trump, the man who once declared he would “protect” women “whether women like or not,” threaten to withhold funding for California because the CIF allows trans athletes to compete?
Yes, he did. Moreover, Trump’s Department of Justice launched an investigation into the state for supposed violations of Title IX, the landmark law that prohibits sex-based discrimination in education programs and activities that receive federal funding.
Trump’s use of Title IX to fuel his crusade against trans athletes — parroted by local politicians as they jousted for airtime on the local news — is darkly ironic and deeply hypocritical.
Because while Trump virtue signals with Title IX in one hand, the other moves to dismantle the branch of federal government responsible for ensuring that the rights of millions of females are protected. Not just young women athletes but young women of many cross-sections: LBGTQ students, student survivors of sexual assault, minority students and disabled students.
Trump’s March executive order to gut the Department of Education (and with it the Office of Civil Rights) is already having a massive impact on how Title IX is regulated and enforced at public institutions across the country. By laying off half of the DOE staff, a move carried out by Secretary of Education Linda McMahon, Trump’s order increased the caseloads of the remaining OCR case workers by 200% and shuttered seven of the 12 regional OCR offices (including the one in California), according to the National Women’s Law Center.
Enforcing Title IX rules that guarantee female athletes don’t get short shift falls under the OCR’s purview. Investigators ensure K-12 school districts, colleges and universities support men’s and women’s sports programs at the same level through equitable budgets, scholarships, coaching salaries, equipment and travel.
And that’s just athletics. The OCR investigates the claims of sexual assault and harassment victims while also probing complaints of discrimination against students based on their race, gender identity, religion and disability status.
OCR ‘most useless it’s ever been’
The early returns under Trump aren’t good. According to a recent Pro Publica investigation, the number of civil rights cases being resolved on college campuses has plummeted since the executive order was issued while cases closed by the office that were dismissed without being investigated have jumped.
“OCR is the most useless it’s ever been, and it’s the most dangerous it’s ever been. And by useless, I mean unavailable. Unable to do the work,” former OCR attorney Michael Pillera told the nonprofit news organization.
If the true aim of Trump administration policies were to protect the rights of females and ensure girls and women’s sports thrive, it would make little sense to gut the federal agency largely responsible for achieving that goal.
Yet here we are.
The hypocrisy of using Title IX as a weapon against the rights of transgender athletes while ignoring Trump policies that render Title IX toothless was lost on several Fresno County politicians Thursday as they took turns blasting the CIF, Gov. Gavin Newsom, the State Legislature.
The only fresh idea on a complex and thorny issue came from first-term Republican Assemblymember David Tangipa, who proposed creating an “open division” for transgender athletes to compete against boys or anyone else at the CIF level but separate from biological females.
“That way anybody who wants to compete can compete, but we also guarantee that there is a space for our young women and our young athletes to compete just like what Title IX has already settled,” Tangipa said.
Already settled? If only.
Under Trump 2.0, the federal statute protecting the civil rights of millions of young female athletes has been unambiguously weakened. Which constitutes a far greater danger to the future of girls’ sports than a few transgender athletes.
This story was originally published May 31, 2025 at 5:30 AM.
