Inside the Plan to Use Trans Student-Athletes to Push Voters to the Right

The attendees of the April 2025 Chino Valley Unified School District Board of Education meeting segregated themselves to opposite sides of the large meeting room: Those opposed to transgender athletes sat on the right, and those in favor on the left. Both sides were made up of a diverse set of ethnicities and ages, but each donned a different kind of uniform. On the left, rainbow flags and signs declaring “Trans Lives Matter.” On the right, navy blue T-shirts with white and pink lettering that read “Save Girls Sports.” 

Three items on the agenda of the meeting had drawn the crowd that evening: 

• A proposal to file a formal complaint to the U.S. Department of Education about transgender athletes competing in California school sports; 
• A proposal to file a complaint to the Department of Education against California Gov. Gavin Newsom and the California Department of Education for allowing trans athletes in schools; 
• A proposal to back a resolution extending support for an interpretation of Title IX that bans transgender women from sports. Title IX is a federal law aimed at preventing gender discrimination in education. 

After 90 minutes of public comment, the three items passed unanimously, 5-0. 

Anti-trans ideology has been adopted by national and local organizations backing Republicans, and embraced as a winning strategy to push voters to the right. Dozens of right-leaning voters who spoke with Capital & Main or who gave public comments at local school board meetings expressed the belief that young boys were “pretending” to be girls solely to break high school sports records, or to get the chance at a college scholarship. The overwhelming reason people transition is to ease gender dysphoria, according to multiple studies.

“Everything that I’m bringing forward, I have other districts that I work with, parents and other board members asking me to help them constantly,” said Sonja Shaw, the president of CVUSD’s Board of Education and a candidate for superintendent of California public schools. And I think if we take that statewide … we will actually see California start prevailing again.”

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In 2022, activists and donors at a meeting of the secretive, well-funded Council for National Policy (CNP) received a tutorial on how to use public school boards and transphobia to drive voters to the polls in Republicans’ favor. The previous year, Virginia elected a Republican governor and temporarily controlled the legislature following the implementation of the “Protect Every Kid” campaign to circumvent and overturn transgender-inclusive policies. 

CNP members directed the crowd to do three things:

1. Identify three to five school boards that would publicly resist implementing the statewide transgender standards.
2. Rally public support through a school board that would block these.
3. Create a visible wave of resistance through the campaign, social media and “all of the above.”

Moms for Liberty, Parents Defending Education and Heritage Action for America have formed local chapters across the United States to whip up opposition to transgender students on school sports teams in the years since the meeting. The religious nonprofit Advocates for Faith and Freedom (AFF) and the nonprofit California Family Council are two of the organizations that have taken up the call in the Golden State. Kim Bengard, a member of CNP, has given $280,290 to AFF through her own nonprofit, It Takes A Family, over four years.  

Advocates for Faith and Freedom filed a lawsuit in federal court against the State of California, Riverside Unified School District and Riverside Unified School District officials on behalf of Martin Luther King Jr. High School students Taylor Starling and Kaitlyn Slavin. Starling and Slavin allege in their lawsuit that Starling was “ousted “ from a spot on the team “to make room” for a transgender girl. They also assert that the district violated their civil rights by ordering them to remove or conceal T-shirts with slogans in opposition to trans athletes. 

Jessica Tapia, who is a public relations advocate at the organization, helped create the Save Girls Sports association earlier this year. The group is managed by AFF, and its long-term goal is to eliminate AB 1266, a California law that allows transgender students to participate in activities, facilities and programs based on their gender identity. Tapia is a former gym teacher who was fired after stating she would not respect trans and nonbinary students’ pronouns, which is a violation of policy in the Jurupa Unified School District. 

“It’s crazy that this law has been in effect for a decade, but we are for the first time now seeing it legally challenged. And so I’m really excited,” Tapia said in a telephone interview with Capital & Main. “We know deep down in our heart this isn’t normal and it isn’t right. I would say a good parent isn’t going to settle for this as being normal.” 

Julianne Fleisher, the attorney representing Starling and Slavin, said in a Save Girls Sports webinar held in March that “there couldn’t be a better time” for a lawsuit challenging the rights of trans athletes to participate in school sports. “We have public opinion, and now we have an administration that is leading the charge in common sense.” 

Elana Redfield, Federal Policy Director of the Williams Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law, said public opinion on trangender people has likely been influenced by disinformation. 

“There’s a lot of science we still need to do to understand what it means for trans and non-binary people to participate in sports. But what we’re not seeing is a dramatic increase in trans people winning competitions or dramatic increase in injuries or other potential risks to other participants,” she said. “We have seen this dramatic rise in disinformation over the last few years.”  

A January New York Times/Ipsos poll found 79% of Americans believed trans athletes should be banned from women’s sports. Nearly 70% of Democrats agreed. 

“If [the Democrats] don’t get on board, then we’re going to start seeing those Democrats hop over to the Republican Party,” said Sophia Lorey, outreach director at the California Family Council (CFC). The organization has been labeled an anti-LGBTQ hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, which the CFC’s president said he was “grateful” for. The CFC also received a donation from Council for National Policy member Kim Bengard’s nonprofit. 

Tapia said she believes there has been a surge in children identifying as transgender because of the COVID-19 pandemic. She said the lockdown pushed kids to be on social media, which exposed them to queer people.  

“Now they’re seeing these big influencers on social media telling them, if you feel this way or that way, then that means you’re likely this. And that’s not true,” she said. “Feelings aren’t facts, and we should definitely not be acting on feelings or telling our children to act on their feelings.” 

Redfield believes Tapia is likely referring to rapid onset gender dysphoria, an unsupported theory embraced by many critics or opponents of transgender rights. “The centerpiece of this framework is the idea that youth are becoming trans, not because they are trans, but because they’re … pushed into it by peers and trusted adults. This is inconsistent with the large body of evidence around gender-affirming care, and is now being embraced by the federal administration and quite intentionally as a weapon against all of the science that existed over the last 40 to 50 years.” 

A common tactic employed by right-wing elected officials and influencers is the doxxing of transgender athletes. AB Hernandez, a 16-year-old athlete at Jurupa Valley High School, has been the subject of many posts and comments accusing her of having an unfair advantage over other competitors. 

“There’s no competing against males when you’re a female, but when you flip that around, and it’s a boy going into a girls’ sport, if he’s a somewhat good athlete, he’s going to dominate. And that’s exactly what we’re seeing with AB Hernandez,” Tapia said. 

“How are you going to save girls’ sports, when … they don’t even come to my school to talk to the girls that are actually on my team?” Hernandez said at a recent school board meeting. “They’ve told me over and over again that they want me on this team.”

Despite the concerns of Hernandez and student advocacy groups, the efforts to ban transgender children from a traditional rite of passage is well underway. The California Family Council is encouraging athletes to sit out matches against trans competitors. Several nonprofits backed by the CNP are supporting school board candidates running on anti-trans rhetoric. The Save Girls Sports association is currently exploring future ballot initiatives to change state law, and recruiting parents and students across California to file Title IX complaints and lawsuits against their school districts. 

After the conclusion of the Chino Valley Unified School District’s Board of Education meeting, Shaw drove to the Redlands Unified School District Board meeting to speak in favor of an item extending support towards prohibiting transgender athletes from participating in girls sports. The motion passed, 3-2. 

 “We are gonna win this fight.” she said. “We are not going to stop.” 

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