California Gov. Gavin Newsom may be uncomfortable with biological males competing against females, but that didn’t stop his fellow Democrats from defeating state legislation to bar transgender athletes from girls’ scholastic sports.
The Democratic majority on the Assembly Committee on Arts, Entertainment, Sports and Tourism voted against two measures, Assembly Bills 89 and 844, that would have required scholastic athletes to compete based on sex at birth in K-12 as well as college sports. Opponents of the proposals defeated the measures by 6-2 votes.
“Despite powerful testimony from student-athletes and advocates, as well as Gov. Newsom’s recent comments that male athletes competing on girls’ sports teams is ’deeply unfair,’ Democrats refused to act,” said the California Assembly Republicans in a statement after the Tuesday vote.
Mr. Newsom drew headlines last month on his podcast for agreeing that allowing transgender athletes to compete in female sports is “deeply unfair,” but declined to take a position on the legislative proposals.
The party-line votes came as further evidence that Democrats at the state and national level have no intention of budging on their support for transgender athletes, despite being on the wrong side of an 80/20 issue in polls that helped juice Republican victories in 2024.
The votes also come with the Trump administration already investigating the California Interscholastic Federation, which allows students to compete in sports based on gender identity, for possible violations of the federal anti-discrimination law Title IX.
AB 89, sponsored by Republican Assemblywoman Kate Sanchez, would have required the federation to prohibit students from competing on gender identity versus sex at birth.
The second bill, AB 844, sponsored by Republican Assemblyman Bill Essayli, would have required students in grades K-12 and college participating in sex-segregated activities to use facilities consistent with their sex rather than gender identity.
The packed hearing drew testimony from advocates for transgender rights on one side and defenders of female athletes on the other, including Daily Wire podcaster and author Matt Walsh.
He said that while issues of safety and fairness are important, the most compelling reason to keep male-born athletes out of women’s sports is that doing otherwise supports the “lie” that men can be women.
“Compelling women to take part in this untruth is evil, perverse and predatory,” Mr. Walsh told the committee. “If you would use the force of law to compel young girls to use a changing room with a boy, you are yourselves predators. Transgenderism is a lie. It is in fact the most deranged lie that mankind has ever invented.”
— Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) April 1, 2025
On the other side was Assemblymember Rick Chavez Zbur, a Democrat who compared the Trump administration’s treatment of transgender people to that of Nazi Germany.
“This is really reminiscent to me of what happened in Nazi Germany in the 1930s,” said Mr. Zbur. “We are moving towards autocracy in this country. In Nazi Germany, transgender people were persecuted and barred from public life.”
In addition, he said, they were “imprisoned and killed in concentration camps, and the way that it started was the same kinds of things that are happening in this country by the Trump administration — taking rights away.”
Tony Hoang, Equality California executive director, cheered the committee for defeating the bills, saying that allowing transgender athletes in girls’ sports hasn’t been a problem in California.
“AB 89 and AB 844 are part of the nationwide coordinated effort led by extremists in Washington D.C. to sow fear and misinformation about transgender people — in particular youth — and attempt to erase them from virtually all areas of public life,” he said.
Twenty-five states have approved measures barring male-born athletes from female sports, but no Democratic governor has signed such a bill.
Valerie Richardson
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