A 16-year-old runner at a California high school is suing Attorney General Rob Bonta over failure to enforce Title IX standards to protect female athletes.
In November, Taylor Starling, a track athlete at Martin Luther King High School in Riverside, California, along with her teammate, Kaitlyn Slavin, filed suit against the district, alleging she lost a spot on the team to a biological male student. Now Stirling has added Bonta to the lawsuit in light of President Donald Trump's executive order that banned males from competing in female sports.
"I felt angry when I was removed from my varsity team because I knew the requirements were changed for him because he is transgender. I felt like my sacrifice, hard work, and dedication didn't matter to my school administrators because I am a girl. It was easy for them to push me aside and that hurt," Starling said.
The suit asked the court to declare that the school district violated Title IX by "failing to provide equal treatment, benefits and opportunities for girls in athletic competitions."
Upon filing the lawsuit, Stirling and Slavin were forewarned by their attorney that they would risk being school pariahs if they went forward with suing the state.
"I asked Taylor and Kaitlyn, 'Are you prepared to deal with this? Are you going to be able to walk through the hallways in her school and dislike you, call you names, and call you out?' And they were," said the girls' attorney Robert Taylor.
Gov. Gavin Newsom has yet to weigh in on the Stirling case in light of his recent comments expressing sympathy for those girls subjected to having compete against males. During the debut episode of his "This Is Gavin Newsom" podcast in March, Newsom spoke with Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk. The firm ally of President Donald Trump asked Newsom, "Would you say no men in female sports?"
"Well, I think it's an issue of fairness. I completely agree with you on that," Newsom responded. "It is an issue of fairness. It's deeply unfair."
James Morley III ✉
James Morley III is a writer with more than two decades of experience in entertainment, travel, technology, and science and nature.
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