California School Board Bashes State Policy Allowing Male Participation in Female Sports: ‘Absolute Travesty’ (National Review)
- Jen Wiersma
- Mar 28
- 3 min read
Original National Review Article By Haley Strack can be found here.
March 27, 2025 3:10 PM
When a biological male won a high-school girls triple jump competition by eight feet last month, some California Democrats lauded his athletic prowess. As state Republicans push to protect girls sports, California school board members are speaking up, calling male participation in female sports an “absolute travesty.”
On Tuesday evening, school board members for Temecula Valley Unified School District in Southern California unanimously passed a resolution to support proposed state legislation that would bar male students from participating in female sports. Jennifer Wiersma and Joseph Komrosky, two TVUSD school board members, called on local jurisdictions to get more involved in protecting girls sports and spaces.
“Title IX of the federal education amendments of 1972 was enacted to protect women and to give them equal and fair opportunities with both academics and education,” Wiersma said. “Under President Biden, radical changes were enacted, allowing biological males to be in women’s’ locker rooms and compete in their sports, robbing them of equal opportunity, safety, privacy, and fairness. Now that President Donald Trump is back in office, he actually reverted back to the original Title IX, and he’s requiring states to comply with it, or risk being sued or lose funding.”
California is not in compliance with Trump’s guidance, Wiersma added: The state’s education code allows students to participate in sports and use gender-segregated locker rooms according to their chosen “gender identity” rather than their biological sex. California Republicans are currently trying to amend that code through AB 89, a proposed bill that will be heard on April 1, and that would ban male participation in female sports.
“This is within our subject matter jurisdiction as board members, so it is important, and we are interested in protecting the safety and protection of our girls. Here in 2025, we have a boy who recently competed as a girl, securing the triple jump by 40 feet, with was eight feet past the first runner-up, a biological woman,” Wiersma said, in reference to a track competition that occurred in Riverside County at Jurupa Valley High School in February.
Junior AB Hernandez, a male who identifies as female, won the girls triple jump competition at the Ontario Relays invitational meet on February 22. He also placed first in the girls high jump and long jump events. Hernandez now hopes to be a state champion.
“This is an absolute travesty,” Wiersma said. “Oddly enough, the law’s never been challenged, until now. AB 89 is an important opportunity for us to say as a district, ‘absolutely, we support this bill.'”
“Local officials have a lot of power to send a message to Sacramento,” she continued. “Sacramento needs to hear from us . . . every city council and every school board across this state should pass this resolution and support AB 89.
Komrosky referenced Governor Gavin Newsom’s recent comments about transgender-identifying students’ participation in sports. Male participation in female sports is “deeply unfair,” Newsom said on a podcast with right-wing influencer Charlie Kirk.
“All it takes is one. If you’re a father of a girl who competes — for years, and years, and years, trying to refine the skill of winning and fierce competition — [all it takes is one] biological boy to just take that to shreds,” Komrosky said. “And that’s despicable, I’m sorry. That is wokeness, and the days of wokeness are gone.”
