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California Attorney General Rob Bonta is facing a Department of Justice investigation over his state’s laws allowing transgender athletes in girls sports.
The DOJ announced the investigation Wednesday, one day after President Donald Trump threatened to pull funding from the state for allowing a trans athlete to compete in a girls track and field championship.
Bonta’s office responded to the recent pressure on him and the state of California over the issue in a statement to Fox News Digital.
“We remain committed to defending and upholding California laws and all additional laws which ensure the rights of students, including transgender students, to be free from discrimination and harassment. We will continue to closely monitor the Trump administration’s actions in this space,” the statement said.
The DOJ’s announcement of its investigation against the state cited a lawsuit that includes Bonta as a defendant. The lawsuit, filed by the families of two girls at Martin Luther King High School in Riverside, California, alleges the school’s cross-country team dropped one athlete from her varsity spot in favor of a trans athlete and that school administrators compared their “Save Girls Sports” T-shirts to swastikas, Fox News Digital has previously reported.
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The suit, filed in November, seeks to challenge the state’s current law that allows trans athletes to compete as girls, which has been in place since 2014. The lawsuit expanded a defendant list to include Bonta Feb. 1.
Just days later, after Trump signed the “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports” executive order Feb. 5, the U.S. Department of Education launched an investigation into the California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) for openly defying the order.
Now, the tension in the state figures to come to a head this weekend at the girls track and field state championship.
The CIF has already made several rule changes that accommodate girls who would be displaced by the trans athlete, AB Hernandez of Jurupa Valley High School. The changes include giving medals to any “biological female” competitors who would have earned a podium spot if not for Hernandez placing ahead of them.
Still, many families and activists are speaking out against the CIF for allowing the situation to continue at all, and the Trump administration has given no indication the rule changes will satisfy its demands on the issue.
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