CNN
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The Trump administration filed another lawsuit Wednesday challenging state policies that allow transgender students to play on sports teams of their choice – this time against California.
The lawsuit against the state board of education and the state’s governing body for school sports, alleges that a state law violates Title IX, the federal law that prohibits sex-based discrimination at schools that receive federal aid.
That state law, the Sex Equity in Education Act, prohibits California public schools from blocking transgender students who want to be on school teams aligning with their gender identity.
“Despite Title IX’s equal opportunity mandate, Defendants have adopted and implemented policies that force girls to compete against boys – despite the real physiological differences between the sexes – if the boy asserts that he is a girl,” the federal lawsuit reads.
It continues, “and despite Title IX’s mandate, Defendants have adopted and implemented policies that allow boys to invade sensitive female-only spaces, endangering girls’ privacy, dignity, and safety and causing a hostile educational environment that denies girls educational opportunities.”
It is the latest move against states and public schools by President Donald Trump and the Justice Department, who have repeatedly threatened to pull federal funding from educational institutions whose rules run afoul of the administration’s priorities.
DOJ has filed a similar suit in Maine and threatened another against Minnesota.
Since the spring, the administration has publicly threatened legal challenges in California over its policies allowing transgender athletes to participate on girls’ teams.
In May, Trump threatened to withhold federal funding from California over one athlete’s participation in a track and field competition. Just a day later, the Justice Department sent a letter to state’s attorney general and the superintendent of public instruction, as well as the California Interscholastic Federation and the Jurupa Unified School District warning of an investigation.
“When given the opportunity to stand up for women, to stand up for their civil rights here in California, he refused to comply,” Bill Essayli, the US Attorney for the Central District of California, said of Gov. Gavin Newsom in a Fox News interview announcing the suit on Wednesday.
