Trans athlete battle: school board begs Trump to force trans ban in blue state

A school board in Washington state has filed a complaint pleading for intervention from the federal government to force the state to ban trans athletes from girls’ sports. 

The Kennewick School Board filed a Title IX complaint to the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights against Washington state’s Superintendent of Public Instruction Chris Reydkal this week. The complaint includes a plea for “urgent” federal intervention against the state’s ongoing policies that defy President Donald Trump’s recent “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports” executive order. 

“We respectfully request URGENT federal intervention due to open and egregious Title IX violations currently occurring within the state’s student athletics as well as requisite school district policies mandated by the state which are in direct violation of Title IX,” the complaint states. 

“We are particularly concerned the openly discriminatory policies and mandates by the state of Washington, State Superintendent Reykdal, OSPI and WIAA not only directly harm our young women, but also jeopardize our district’s essential federal funding, the loss of which would most severely impact our most impoverished and at risk populations.” 

The school board is currently caught in a conflict of directives as Trump’s administration has ordered all public schools to ban trans athletes from girls’ sports or risk losing federal funding, but Washington’s state government has ordered schools to continue allowing trans inclusion. 

“This state-imposed restriction erodes the trust between schools and families and unreasonably infringes on the precious fundamental right of parents in guiding their children’s development,” the complaint continues. 

“Our school board addressed this by genuinely attempting to find a middle ground between the state mandate and the fundamental role of parents. We did so with slight modifications to the state-mandated policy that shouldn’t offend any reasonable person. Nevertheless, OSPI has taken the position that our slight modifications offend the law (as OSPI has interpreted it) and seems to have triggered the State Superintendent Chris Reykdal and OSPI.”

Reydkal previously claimed it was “inaccurate” to say there are only two genders during a video address in late February.

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“It is quite simply inaccurate to say, biologically, that there are only boys and there are only girls,” Reykdal said. “There’s a continuum. There’s a science to this. There are children who are born intersex. There are children whose hormones and whose chromosomes are not consistent with their sex at birth.

“Our state laws make clear that children get to identify and participate based on the gender in which they identify. We’re going to uphold that law.”

Reykdal also insisted in that address that Trump does not have the authority as president to issue a ban on trans athletes in girls sports but conceded the U.S. Congress does.

Another school district in Washington opted to take matters into its own hands and defy the state government in late February. 

The Tumwater School District’s board of directors voted 3-1 on Feb. 27 to ban trans athletes from playing for girls’ sports teams after a nationaly-publicized controversy involving one of its school’s girls’ basketball teams. 

A civil rights complaint was filed with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights on behalf of a teenage girl in Washington state who was allegedly punished for refusing to play a basketball game against a trans athlete. 

The complaint alleged that the Tumwater School District in Washington is currently investigating 15-year-old Frances Staudt for “misgendering” the opponent and violating the district’s policies against bullying and harassment on Feb. 7. 

The issue of trans inclusion became so concerning for Washginton residents, that in December the WIAA announced a proposal to create a separate open division for transgender athletes to compete in. 

That proposal came weeks after the Central Valley School Board, which oversees schools in Spokane Valley and Liberty Lake, Washington, voted to send a message to the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association (WIAA) over the issues after much debate at a school board meeting.

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