After months of being harassed and heckled by a bunch of adults, AB Hernandez, a 16-year-old transgender athlete, gained first place in two occasions on the California Interscholastic Federation’s Observe and Subject Championships on Saturday amidst cheers from mother and father, coaches and different opponents. Hours after President Donald Trump demanded, in a Might 27 publish on Fact Social, that she not be allowed to compete, the U.S. Division of Justice launched an investigation into California faculty directors, the CIF and the Jurupa Unified Faculty District, the place Hernandez is a scholar, for permitting transgender student-athletes to compete in women’ sports activities.
The California Interscholastic Federation successfully created a brand new class for Hernandez following Trump’s assertion. Underneath new guidelines for this 12 months’s observe and area championships, the subsequent “organic feminine student-athlete” that completed beneath Hernandez shared the place along with her. Two first place medals have been awarded for triple leap, and three for top leap, because the second place winners tied. Two second place medals have been awarded for lengthy leap.
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“College students take part within the gender through which they establish. I don’t have anything,” Rebecca Brutlag, director of media on the California Interscholastic Federation, stated in response to an inquiry as to how the group outlined a “organic feminine.”
“I could also be competing with the ladies, however I’m technically competing on my own,” Hernandez stated throughout an interview with Capital & Primary as she ready for the meet. “Which is why I’m sort of like, ‘Properly, simply received to carry out my greatest.’ So long as I’m proud of my outcomes, that’s all I care about.”
After the championships, U.S. Assistant Lawyer Common Harmeet Okay. Dhillon despatched a letter to California public faculties and to commissioners of the California Interscholastic Federation stating that the coverage permitting college students to take part in athletic occasions based mostly on their gender identification violates federal regulation. Dillon warned districts they’d be open to authorized legal responsibility for permitting transgender college students to compete, and he or she demanded that college leaders certify compliance in writing by 5 p.m on June 9. President Trump additionally posted on Fact Social that he’ll impose “large-scale fines” on California for permitting Hernandez to compete.
The president’s publish about Hernandez was the loudest voice to hitch a cacophony of native elected officers, conservative influencers and random adults who’ve made Hernandez the poster baby for an effort to ban transgender kids from taking part in sports activities and getting into sure bodily areas that match their gender identification. A number of of those that’ve weighed in have made the matter a central challenge of platforms of their campaigns for public workplace. Sonja Shaw, the president of the Chino Valley Unified Faculty District’s Board of Schooling, states that transgender women “undermine equity and security” on the web site for her marketing campaign for superintendent of public instruction overseeing California’s public faculties.
Shaw doxxed Hernandez in February, posting her full title, highschool and the truth that she is transgender on-line. Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, who’s operating for governor of California, has misgendered transgender college students repeatedly on social media. Bianco additionally co-hosted Shaw’s kickoff marketing campaign occasion in Riverside.
Anti-trans insurance policies have been adopted by nationwide and native organizations backing Republican candidates as a profitable technique to push voters to the suitable. Members of the Council for Nationwide Coverage (CNP), a secretive, well-funded group of highly effective conservatives, obtained a tutorial on methods to use public faculty boards and transphobia to drive voters to the polls in Republicans’ favor in 2022. The plan requires, amongst different issues, whipping up assist at native faculty boards, which Shaw has spearheaded via introducing motions prohibiting transgender athletes from taking part in women’ sports activities which have been replicated in class districts throughout Southern California. One other step is creating “a visual wave of resistance via the marketing campaign [and] social media.”
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That wave made a small displaying outdoors of Veteran’s Memorial Stadium throughout each days of the 2025 California Interscholastic Federation’s Observe and Subject Championships, held in Clovis. A gaggle of 10 adults stood outdoors of the meet carrying indicators and chanting into megaphones because the occasion received underway.
Beth Bourne, an worker of College of California, Davis, carried a foam board that displayed the identities of 10 transgender youth athletes whom she stated she recognized by trying on the kids’s social media accounts. The morning of the occasion, Bourne posted a sequence of tweets concerning the scholar athletes, together with AB Hernandez. “Individuals really feel like I’m stalking [the kids] as a result of I look on the social media accounts for the trans-identified children in our faculties, and I speak to oldsters and I have a look at what’s on the trainer’s social media. I don’t know if it’s stalking or if it’s doing like…investigative journalistic work. I encourage everybody to do the identical,” she stated.
Just a few protesters made their approach into the stadium sporting shirts proclaiming “Shield Women Sports activities” and “XX≠XY.” Through the first day of the meet, a airplane towing a banner emblazoned with “No Boys in Women’ Sports activities!” circled overhead for hours. The meet was paused at one level in the course of the finals when a number of adults started to heckle Hernandez as she was about to carry out her leap. Sophia Lorey, who has organized previous protests in opposition to Hernandez at her observe meets, was escorted out of the stadium after she handed out flyers encouraging others to get entangled in her efforts. Lorey is the outreach director of the California Household Council, which has been labeled an anti-LGBTQ hate group by the Southern Poverty Legislation Heart.
The technique of utilizing a “seen wave of resistance” to a transgender athlete didn’t seem to win over many supporters on the meet. On the sphere, Hernandez’s opponents embraced her wholeheartedly. She spent the lengthy, scorching weekend laughing and chatting with the opposite women, and exchanging direct messages on social media after the occasions wrapped for the day. When the time got here to current medals on the rostrum, Hernandez stood smiling with the ladies she shared the award with.
“Sharing the rostrum was nothing however an honor,” Brooke White, who was awarded the second-place podium for the lengthy leap alongside Hernandez, informed the San Francisco Chronicle. “Though the publicity she’s been receiving has been fairly adverse, I imagine she deserves publicity as a result of she’s a famous person, she’s a rock star, she’s representing who she is.”
Hernandez’s mom, Nereyda, was approached by dozens of people that provided their assist. Some had pushed for hours to attend the meet in assist of AB.
“They’re distracting the entire athletes they supposedly got here to guard,” one coach from a San Diego group stated. “I’ve been a coach for over 20 years. The youngsters don’t care.”
Hernandez stated the entire assist was heartfelt, and made her expertise a lot better. “It simply actually overtakes the hate, and it simply means a lot. And it makes me wish to maintain pushing and simply maintain preventing for me to proceed this and depart a legacy behind.”
