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<\/p>\nAt a recent meeting of California\u2019s high school sports governing board, two seniors from Arroyo Grande High School spoke out against a transgender peer competing on their track and field team and allegedly \u201cwatching\u201d them in the girls\u2019 locker room.<\/p>\n
One of the Central Coast students said she is \u201cmore comfortable\u201d changing in her car now. The other cited a Bible verse about God creating men and women separately, and accused the California Interscholastic Federation of subjecting girls to \u201cexploitative and intrusive behavior that is disguised through transgender ideology.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOur privacy is being compromised and our sports are being taken over,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
During the same meeting, Trevor Norcross, the father of 17-year-old transgender junior Lily Norcross, offered a starkly different perspective.<\/p>\n
\u201cBathrooms and locker rooms are the most dangerous place for trans students, and when they are at their most vulnerable,\u201d he said. \u201cOur daughter goes to extreme lengths to avoid them. Unfortunately, sometimes you can\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Lily Norcross with her parents, Trevor and Hilary Norcross. <\/p>\n
(Owen Main \/ For The Times)<\/p>\n
Norcross said Lily\u2019s teammates had for months been misrepresenting a single moment from the year prior, when Lily had to use the restroom after a full day of avoiding it, chose to use the one in the locker room because it is monitored by an adult and safer for her than others, and briefly stopped to chat with a friend on her way out.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s always more to the story,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The conflicting testimony reflected an increasingly charged debate<\/a> over transgender athletes participating in youth sports nationwide. Churches, anti-LGBTQ+ advocacy groups, cisgender athletes and their conservative families are organizing to topple trans-inclusive policies, while liberal state officials, queer advocacy groups, transgender kids and their families are trying to preserve policies that allow transgender kids to compete.<\/p>\n The battle has been particularly pitched in California, which has some of the nation\u2019s most progressive statewide athletic policies and liberal leaders willing to defend them \u2014 including from the Trump administration, which has attacked transgender rights and is suing<\/a> the California Department of Education and the CIF, alleging their trans-inclusive sports policies violate the civil rights of cisgender athletes.<\/p>\n Along with a pending U.S. Supreme Court decision<\/a> on the legality of policies banning transgender athletes from competing in states such as Idaho and West Virginia, the Trump administration\u2019s lawsuit against California could have sweeping implications for transgender athletes \u2014 with a state loss potentially contributing to their being sidelined not just in conservative states, but nationwide.<\/p>\n For the handful of transgender California teens caught in the middle of the fight, it has all been deeply unnerving \u2014 if strangely motivating.<\/p>\n \u201cI have to keep doing it, because if I stop doing sports, they won,\u201d Lily Norcross said. \u201cThey got what they wanted.\u201d<\/p>\n A coordinated effort<\/p>\n The movement to overturn California\u2019s trans-inclusive policies is being coordinated at the local, state and national levels, and has gained serious momentum since several of its leaders joined the Trump administration.<\/p>\n At the local level, cisgender athletes<\/a>, their families and other conservative and religious allies have expressed anger over transgender athletes using girls\u2019 facilities and resentment over their allegedly stealing victories and the spotlight from cisgender girls.<\/p>\n In 2024, two girls at Martin Luther King High School in Riverside filed a lawsuit<\/a> challenging the participation of their transgender track and field teammate Abigail Jones<\/a>, arguing her participation limited their own in violation of Title IX protections for female athletes. A judge found insufficient evidence of that, and recently dismissed the case.<\/p>\n Last year, Jurupa Valley High School track star AB Hernandez won several medals<\/a> at the CIF State Track and Field Championships despite President Trump personally demanding she be barred from competing. Critics argued Hernandez\u2019s wins were unfair, despite CIF having changed its rules so that her cisgender competitors received the medals they would have received had she not competed.<\/p>\n AB Hernandez competed for Jurupa Valley High School in the long jump at the 2025 CIF State Track and Field Championships.<\/p>\n (Tomas Ovalle \/ For The Times)<\/p>\n The challenges to Abigail, AB and Lily competing have all been driven in part by a network of conservative organizations working across California and beyond to oust transgender girls from sports, including by coordinating with evangelical churches, pushing social media campaigns, lining up speakers for school board meetings and working with cisgender athletes to hone their messages of opposition.<\/p>\n Shannon Kessler, a former PTA president and church leader who is now running for state Assembly, has worked within the wider network. In March 2025, Kessler founded the group Save Girls\u2019 Sports Central Coast, and the next month distributed fliers at Harvest Church in Arroyo Grande that called on parishioners to challenge Lily\u2019s participation on the track and field team.<\/p>\n Kessler said the two seniors on Lily\u2019s team, who did not respond to a request for comment, had initially asked if she would \u201cspeak on their behalf,\u201d so she did, but she has since let the girls \u201ctake the lead.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThey took the initiative to speak and wrote their own speeches,\u201d Kessler said, of their remarks at the recent CIF meeting.<\/p>\n Norcross said the effort to sideline his daughter has clearly been coordinated by outsiders from the start. He blames Kessler, Harvest Church and the state\u2019s wider network of conservative activists for stirring up baseless fears about transgender athletes, exposing his family to danger and leaving them no choice but to defend themselves publicly.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not a fair position to be in,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n Tied up in court<\/p>\n Within months of Trump issuing his February 2025 executive order<\/a> calling for transgender athletes to be barred from competition nationwide, two leaders within the California conservative network turned Trump administration officials \u2014 Harmeet Dhillon<\/a>, who is now assistant attorney general for civil rights, and former state Assemblyman Bill Essayli<\/a>, who is now in charge of the U.S. attorney\u2019s office in Los Angeles \u2014 quickly moved to bring the state to heel.<\/p>\n They launched an investigation<\/a> into California\u2019s trans-inclusive sports policies, ordered its school districts<\/a> to comply with Trump\u2019s order in defiance of state law, and then sued the Department of Education and the CIF when they refused \u2014 alleging the state\u2019s policies illegally discriminate against cisgender girls under Title IX by ignoring \u201cundeniable biological differences between boys and girls, in favor of an amorphous \u2018gender identity.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Neither Dhillon nor the Justice Department responded to a request for comment. Essayli\u2019s office declined to comment. <\/p>\n Assistant Atty. Gen. for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon arrives for a news conference at the Justice Department in September.<\/p>\n (Andrew Harnik \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n The Department of Education and the CIF have called for the lawsuit to be dismissed, arguing that Title IX regulations \u201cdo not require the exclusion of transgender girls\u201d and that the Justice Department had provided no evidence that the state\u2019s policies left cisgender girls unable to compete.<\/p>\n The CIF said in a statement that it \u201cprovides students with the opportunity to belong, connect, and compete in education-based experiences in compliance with California law,\u201d but it and the Department of Education said they do not comment on pending litigation. California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta\u2019s office has slammed the Trump administration\u2019s efforts, and filed its own lawsuit<\/a> to block them.<\/p>\n Separate from the California litigation, there is a major case on transgender youth athletes before the U.S. Supreme Court.<\/p>\n After athletes successfully challenged West Virginia and Idaho bans on transgender competition in lower federal courts, the states appealed. During arguments last month, the high court\u2019s conservative majority sounded ready to uphold the state bans<\/a> \u2014 but not necessarily in a way that would topple liberal state laws allowing such athletes to compete.<\/p>\n Pressure and resolve<\/p>\n Lily, AB and Abigail \u2014 all of whom are referenced anonymously in the federal lawsuit against California \u2014 agreed, with their parents, to be identified by The Times in order to share how it has felt to be targeted.<\/p>\n![\"AB](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/1771761188_763_.jpeg\")
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