Trans high school athlete wins two events at California finals in shadow of protests, Trump funding threats
By Emma Tucker, Julia Vargas Jones, Norma Galeana, CNN
Clovis, California (CNN) — The transgender high school athlete whose participation in this weekend’s California track and field championships prompted President Donald Trump to threaten to remove state funding reached the podium in all three of her events Saturday.
A.B. Hernandez, a public high school junior in Southern California, took first place in the high jump and the triple jump, and finished in second place in the long jump in the finals.
Following criticism from some in the community who said A.B.’s participation prevented lower-ranked competitors from advancing to the championships this weekend, the high school sports governing body allowed more cisgender girls, whose gender identity conforms with their sex assigned at birth, to compete.
The California Interscholastic Federation also said if a transgender athlete earned medals in an event, their ranking wouldn’t prevent a “biological female” from medaling as well, the Associated Press reported. That means A.B. shared her top spot with two co-winners in the high jump and one co-winner in the triple jump.
As A.B. was warming up for her first field event Saturday, protesters outside the stadium used a megaphone to yell “no boys in girl sports” multiple times until the public address announcer interrupted the meet and demanded “respect for the athletes.” The meet resumed shortly after.
She placed first in long jump, high jump and triple jump in the preliminary round Friday as a group protested her ability to compete, holding signs reading, “Save Girls Sports” and cheered while an airplane with a banner reading, “No Boys in Girls’ Sports” flew over the stadium.
“I don’t think that having a male in female competition is fair competition,” one protester told CNN, who misgendered A.B. while saying as an athlete, she should compete in her “biological field.” Most parents who came with their children to the meet, however, said they don’t want the issue to be politicized and want the focus to remain on the competition.
Dan Usher, who brought his teen son to compete in the shot put events from Woodside High School in the San Francisco Bay Area, said he hoped the issue can be resolved at once. “They are going to have to decide,” Usher said. “Everybody wants to focus on the excellent performances. Instead, there are some distractions.”
In Washington State, which allows athletes to participate in programs consistent with their gender identity, another transgender high school athlete, also won a track and field title at the state championships this weekend. Verónica Garcia won first place in the girls 400 dash 2A.
In an interview with CNN affiliate KXLY last year, the 17-year-old explained her decision to compete on the girls’ team.
“If I’m gonna start living my life as a woman, it would make more sense to compete on the women’s team – but also for my own safety, if I remained on the boys team,” Garcia told the outlet.
New rule allowing more cisgender girls only applies to championships
In California, the state’s Interscholastic Federation announced a new policy on Tuesday which only applied to this weekend’s meet, allowing “biological female” student athletes who would otherwise have earned a qualifying mark – if not for the participation of trans students – entry to the finals.
The top 12 finishers in most events in Friday’s preliminary round advanced to Saturday’s state finals in Clovis but in the three events A.B. was part of, the top 13 finishers were allowed to compete.
The same day, Trump said on Truth Social, “large scale” federal funding “will be held back, maybe permanently, if the Executive Order on this subject matter is not adhered to,” referencing his February directive titled, “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports.”
A day after Trump’s announcement, the Justice Department said it was investigating whether California’s School Success and Opportunity Act violates the federal Title IX law prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sex in education programs or activities receiving federal money. The California law in part prohibits public schools from blocking transgender students from participating in school sports.
The federal agency sent the announcement in letters to the California Attorney General and the superintendent of public instruction, as well as the California Interscholastic Federation and the Jurupa Unified School District, where A.B. attends high school.
The school district said it is required to follow California law and the state federation’s policy regarding school athletics.
The office of Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat who recently has broken from many progressives’ position on the issue and others, said the governing body’s pilot rule is “reasonable.” Newsom, in a March podcast episode with conservative activist Charlie Kirk, called the issue of trans athletes competing in sports “deeply unfair.”
Protesters claim A.B. has ‘biological advantage’ despite scarce research
On Friday afternoon, a protester in support of trans athletes competing was arrested at the intersection in front of the stadium where the meet was taking place after assaulting an adult male who was one of the “Save Girls Sports” protesters, according to Ty Wood, public information officer for the Clovis Police Department.
The victim was in his car leaving the area when “words were exchanged and the protester on the sidewalk ran into the street” and started assaulting him, Wood said.
“During the disturbance, one of them used pepper spray against the other. EMS was called,” before the 19-year-old was arrested and booked into Fresno County Jail for felony assault with a deadly weapon, vandalism and obstructing/delaying an officer, Wood said.
At the track meet, one coach from Redondo Beach told CNN affiliate KCAL “it’s not easy” for A.B. to be competing.
The coach said of CIF’s pilot policy: “The solution they came up with is very good. They’re allowing her to compete but not displacing the other athletes. I think they came up with a good solution for a difficult, challenging question. The problem is it’s not going away,” according to the KCAL report.
One protester told the outlet what CIF is “doing wrong is allowing boys in girls’ sports. I would like to see the three categories. Let them have their own category… These girls don’t have a fair playing field. They’re going against a boy,” the woman told KCAL, adding she believes A.B. has a “biological advantage.”
At the core of disagreements over access is whether trans women have unfair physical athletic advantages. Few trans athletes have reached elite levels of sports competition and even fewer have taken home top prizes, but their limited success has fueled the growing movement to ban them from participating on teams consistent with their gender identity.
Research on trans people’s athletic performance is scarce, and there have been no large-scale scientific studies on the topic or on how hormone therapies may affect their performance in specific sport categories, such as running or wrestling.
Trans athletes and advocates say trans people deserve the right to compete alongside their peers and reap the proven social, physical and mental benefits of sports.
‘I’ve trained so hard,’ A.B. said
This weekend’s meet wasn’t the first time A.B. faced backlash as she competed.
At another competition earlier this month, she was met with heckling and protesters in the crowd as she was accompanied by campus security guards and deputies from the Orange County Sheriff’s Department, according to Keinan Briggs, who coaches two athletes who placed lower than A.B. in last weekend’s competition.
While many parents and community members are upset, Briggs agrees with those who believe A.B. should compete because there is not a specific category for transgender athletes, he said.
In an interview with Capital & Main earlier this month, A.B. said she has the support of most of the athletes she competes against: “Girls were just shocked that people would actually come to do that, and really bully a child.”
“I’ve trained so hard. I mean, hours of conditioning every day, five days a week. Every day since November, three hours after school. And then all of summer, no summer break for me,” she told Capital & Main. “A few people think I’m brave and strong and they hope to be like me one day. I say, don’t just hope, make it happen.”
“I’m still a child. You’re an adult, and for you to act like a child shows how you are as a person,” said A.B., whose family declined to comment for this story when contacted by CNN.
A.B.’s mother Nereyda Hernandez said this month on Instagram her daughter’s identity “doesn’t give her an advantage; it gives her courage. It takes immense bravery to show up, compete, and be visible in a world that often questions your very right to exist, let alone to participate.”
Both A.B. and her mother spoke at a Placentia-Yorba Linda Unified School District board of education meeting on April 8. Nereyda Hernandez told the board A.B. is competing at the high school level in girls’ sports in accordance with the law but has faced harassment and stalking.
“We’re supposed to treat all children equal, and we’re supposed to protect our children,” the mother said, adding the team does not feel “unsafe.”
A.B. referenced the Save Girls Sports group at the meeting, saying: “If you are going to save someone, it should be the girls on my team who all love me and support me, and they’ve told me over and over again that they want me on this team.”
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