The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 on Tuesday to uphold state laws that bar biological male transgender athletes from women's sports, and California's governor wants everyone to know it doesn't change a thing in his state. That's the problem.
A spokesperson for Gov. Gavin Newsom told Fox News Digital that the high court's decision "does not affect California's laws," adding that the state "remains committed to ensuring every Californian, including the LGBTQ community, is met with dignity and respect." Translation: California will keep doing exactly what the majority of states have moved to stop.
The ruling gave a clear green light to states that have passed laws protecting women's athletic competition from biological male competitors. But California remains one of roughly two dozen states that have no such protections. Instead, it has the opposite, a 2013 law, AB 1266, signed by then-Gov. Jerry Brown, that requires transgender students to participate in sports consistent with their stated gender identity. That law took effect in 2014, and more than a decade later, the consequences are playing out on tracks and fields across the state.
Those consequences have a name: AB Hernandez. The transgender athlete won two track and field state titles for the second straight year, taking first in the triple jump and high jump and finishing second in the long jump at the prior year's championships. The California Interscholastic Federation responded to the situation by re-implementing a pilot program that bumps every girl who finishes behind the trans athlete up one spot on the podium.
Read that again. The state's athletic governing body didn't change the policy. It created a workaround, a consolation adjustment for the girls who lost.
The repeated dominance by Hernandez in girls' competition has generated what Newsom's own office described as a "trans athlete national media crisis" for the second year in a row and third time in total in one year. Activist Sophia Lorey, a former NCAA women's soccer player, organized a "Save Girls Sports" press conference near the competition grounds ahead of the first round of the state tournament in early May.
The Trump administration's Department of Justice launched Title IX lawsuits against education agencies in California over policies allowing trans athletes in girls' high school sports. The suit was officially filed in July, following Hernandez's championship wins. A governor already facing questions about his attention to the job now faces a federal legal challenge over a policy he privately concedes is broken.
What makes Newsom's position so difficult to take seriously is that he keeps saying one thing in interviews and doing another through his office. In March 2025, appearing on a podcast with the late Charlie Kirk, Newsom declared that males competing in girls' sports is "deeply unfair." His LGBTQ caucus allies were described as furious.
Then in July 2025, on the "Shawn Ryan Show," Newsom went further:
"Every parent coming up says, 'It's so unfair.' Like 'Whoa,' like everywhere I went, progressively-minded people, not bigots, that are champions of trans policy like I am, but didn't like the sports. They were like 'come on man, you got to figure this out.'"
He acknowledged that President Trump is capitalizing on the issue. "Trump is having the time of his life, and I assure you he is because we've had conversations on this topic," Newsom said. He added: "And now he's suing and threatening us, and they're just, and you know, I'm the poster child. But I do think we have to address that issue."
So the governor of California says the situation is unfair. He says parents across the political spectrum are telling him it's unfair. He says even "progressively-minded people" who are "champions of trans policy" don't like what's happening in sports. He admits he's become a national target over it. And yet, when the Supreme Court hands down a ruling that validates what twenty-seven other states have done to fix the problem, his office fires off a press release insisting California's laws won't change.
That's not leadership. That's a man already under scrutiny on multiple fronts who can't afford another fight with his own base.
Newsom's office has tried to thread the needle before. In an earlier statement responding to the "Save Girls Sports" press conference, his team said the governor "rejects the right wing's cynical attempt to weaponize this debate as an excuse to vilify individual kids." The statement continued: "The Governor's position is simple: stand with all kids and stand up to bullies."
The framing is instructive. In Newsom's telling, the girls who lose state championships to a biological male competitor aren't the ones being treated unfairly, the people raising the issue are the bullies. The parents Newsom himself described as "progressively-minded people, not bigots" are, in his office's official language, part of a "cynical attempt to weaponize" the debate.
His office also provided Fox News Digital a bulleted list of what it called the governor's "strongest record in the country on protecting and expanding transgender rights," including making it easier to update gender markers on official documents and appointing multiple trans judges. The list noted that California is one of 22 states with laws requiring transgender students to participate in sports consistent with their gender identity.
The article's own reporting, meanwhile, placed California among 23 states without laws protecting women's sports, a slightly different framing that points to the same bottom line: California stands firmly on the side of allowing biological males into girls' competition, and the governor's office is proud of it.
Newsom's bind is real, and it's one of his own making. He built a political brand on being the most progressive governor in America. His office's own fact sheet touts his transgender rights record as the nation's best. But the ground has shifted under him, not because conservatives moved the goalposts, but because ordinary parents, including the "progressively-minded" ones Newsom describes, watched biological males win girls' championships and said enough.
The Supreme Court's 6-3 ruling didn't create that sentiment. It ratified it. A clear majority of justices found that states have the authority to draw the line that California refuses to draw. The Trump DOJ's Title IX lawsuit against California education agencies adds federal legal pressure on top of the political kind.
Newsom's allies in the LGBTQ caucus were already furious after his March 2025 comments acknowledging the unfairness. His office responded to the Supreme Court ruling by doubling down on the status quo. The governor who has presided over staggering accountability failures in California apparently decided that alienating his progressive base was a bigger risk than alienating every girl who trains for a state championship only to lose to a competitor with an undeniable biological advantage.
Meanwhile, the CIF's podium-adjustment program, bumping girls up one spot when they finish behind a trans athlete, stands as a quiet admission that the competition isn't fair. If it were, no adjustment would be needed. The governing body can't bring itself to change the rule, so it created a patch. The girls get a consolation placement. The policy stays intact.
That's the arrangement Newsom's office is defending when it says the Supreme Court ruling "does not affect California's laws." Technically true. The ruling upheld other states' right to protect their female athletes. California chose not to join them.
The governor whose inner circle keeps generating legal headaches now faces a federal lawsuit, a Supreme Court ruling that validates the opposing position, backlash from his own allies, and a growing roster of parents, by his own account, telling him the system is broken. His response is a press release about dignity and respect.
The girls on the podium who got bumped up a spot might have a different definition of dignity.
