A Biden-appointed federal judge has dismissed the Trump Justice Department’s lawsuit challenging California’s policy allowing transgender-identifying biological males to compete on girls’ school sports teams.
U.S. District Judge Cynthia Valenzuela of the Central District of California dismissed the Justice Department’s case against the California Department of Education and the California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) with prejudice, handing California officials a major victory in their ongoing battle with the Trump administration over women’s sports, the New York Post reported.
Valenzuela was nominated to the federal bench by Joe Biden and confirmed by the Democrat-controlled Senate in December 2024.
The Trump Justice Department filed the lawsuit in July 2025, accusing California education officials and the CIF of violating Title IX by allowing biological males who identify as female to compete against girls.
According to the DOJ complaint, California’s policies deprive female athletes of equal athletic opportunities by forcing them to compete against biological males for victories, podium placements, recognition, and potentially college opportunities.
But Valenzuela rejected the administration’s argument.
The Biden judge concluded that California had not received sufficiently clear notice that federal education funding was conditioned on excluding transgender-identifying biological males from girls’ athletic teams.
Valenzuela ruled that even assuming Title IX permits schools to determine athletic eligibility based on biological sex, the statute does not clearly require every state to do so.
The ruling comes despite the Supreme Court’s landmark June 30 decision in West Virginia v. B.P.J. and Little v. Hecox, where the high court upheld state laws protecting women’s and girls’ athletic categories on the basis of biological sex.
The Supreme Court held that states may maintain women’s and girls’ sports for biological females and may determine eligibility based on biological sex. However, the Court stopped short of declaring that Title IX requires every state, including California, to adopt that policy.
Valenzuela relied heavily on that distinction.
In other words, while the Supreme Court ruled that states such as West Virginia and Idaho are legally permitted to protect female athletic categories, Valenzuela concluded that the ruling did not automatically invalidate California’s opposite approach.
The Justice Department is now evaluating its options for an appeal.
Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon responded cryptically following the ruling:
“California judge … … Stay tuned”
That certainly sounds like this fight is far from over.
As The Gateway Pundit previously reported, the battle over California women’s sports exploded nationally in 2025 after transgender-identifying biological male athlete AB Hernandez competed against female athletes in California high school track and field.
Hernandez competed in the CIF state championships and took top positions in multiple girls’ events, prompting outrage from female athletes, parents, women’s-sports advocates, and President Trump.
The Gateway Pundit reported that Trump warned California Governor Gavin Newsom that the state could face “large scale fines” and potentially lose federal funding if California continued allowing biological males to compete against girls.
The controversy became so politically toxic that even Newsom — one of the nation’s most prominent Democrat governors and a longtime ally of the transgender movement — admitted during a conversation with Charlie Kirk that allowing biological males into women’s sports was “deeply unfair.”
As The Gateway Pundit reported at the time, Newsom acknowledged:
“It’s deeply unfair.”
Yet his state continued enforcing policies allowing transgender-identifying biological males to participate in girls’ athletics.
The CIF even modified its competition rules amid the Hernandez controversy so that additional biological female athletes could qualify and transgender athletes could share podium placements rather than officially displacing female competitors — an extraordinary workaround that did nothing to resolve the underlying dispute over biological males competing in female categories.
The Trump administration finally took California to court. Now a Biden-appointed judge has thrown that lawsuit out.
But Dhillon’s response suggests the administration may be preparing its next move.
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