Trump Administration Targets California After Trans Athlete Wins Track Events

The Trump administration is going after California following a 16-year-old trans athlete’s victories in a state track and field championship over the weekend.

The 16-year-old, AB Hernandez, a junior at Jurupa Valley High School in Riverside County, has made headlines and been at the center of protests in recent months simply for competing.

Despite protests on Saturday, Hernandez won first place in the girls’ high jump and triple jump at the State Track and Field Championships at Buchanan High School in Clovis, California. Hernandez also finished second in the long jump.

But because of a new rule instituted by the California Interscholastic Federation, multiple other student athletes also received medals in the categories that Hernandez competed in. As such, Jillene Wetteland and Lelani Laruelle also won first place in the high jump, and Kira Gant Hatcher also won first in the triple jump. Brooke White also placed second in the long jump.

“A Biological Male competed in California Girls State Finals, WINNING BIG, despite the fact that they were warned by me not to do so. As Governor Gavin Newscum fully understands, large scale fines will be imposed!!!” the president wrote on Truth Social on Monday.

On the same day, Harmeet K. Dhillon, the head of the Civil Rights Division at the Department of Justice, sent a transphobic letter to public school districts in California claiming that the state’s law allowing students to compete in sports based on their gender identity rather than the identity assigned to them at birth is “facially unconstitutional.”

“The Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex,” Dhillon, a legal adviser to Trump, an anti-voting rights and anti-LGBTQ rights extremist, argued in the letter. “Knowingly depriving female students of athletic opportunities and benefits on the basis of their sex would constitute unconstitutional sex discrimination under the Equal Protection Clause.”

“Scientific evidence shows that upsetting the historical status quo and forcing girls to compete against males would deprive them of athletic opportunities and benefits because of their sex,” she also wrote, without clarifying where to find the evidence.

The letter gives California a week to fall in line with the Justice Department’s interpretation of the Equal Protection Clause, which seems to complement Trump’s February executive order.

Trump’s order aims to block “male competitive participation in women’s sports” and “rescind all funds from educational programs that deprive women and girls of fair athletic opportunities.”

In a letter to superintendents and administrators in the state on Tuesday, Tony Thurmond, the California superintendent of public instruction, reportedly said that the department would review the request and respond by June 9, but that the letter isn’t the law.

According to The Athletic, Thurmond argued that the Equal Protection Clause “does not require that athletic teams be segregated by ‘biological sex.’”

“The DOJ assertions are not in themselves law, and the letter by itself cannot be an enforcement mechanism,” Thurmond also reportedly said.

The news comes after the California Interscholastic Federation, California’s high school sports governing body, expanded eligibility for the 2025 CIF State Track and Field Championships rather than excluding anyone from the competition.

“The CIF values all of our student-athletes and we will continue to uphold our mission of providing students with the opportunity to belong, connect, and compete while complying with California law and Education Code,” the organization continued.

On Sunday, Nereyda Hernandez, AB Hernandez’s mom, told local outlet KCRA that she was a Trump supporter, but her daughter’s perspective and treatment changed her views.

“Just talking to AB, and I started analyzing things differently,” Nereyda Hernandez said. “It’s too much for me because we’re people and I don’t feel we’re being treated as such.”

She also told KCRA that the protests during her daughter’s big day were a little distracting, but that she was “proud of her.”

“A kid is more mature than a lot of these adults putting her in this situation. So I’m just happy, yeah, I could brag. That’s my baby,” she added.

Representatives for the Jurupa Unified School District and the California Interscholastic Federation, respectively, did not immediately respond to HuffPost’s request for comment.