California education officials have formally rejected the Trump administration’s demand to bar transgender girls from girls school sports teams, escalating tensions between the Golden State and the White House. 

The state’s Department of Education on Monday declined to sign a proposed resolution agreement with the administration that would have required it to instruct schools across California to ban trans girls from girls sports; adopt “biology-based” definitions of the terms “male” and “female;” strip transgender female athletes of their titles and records and apologize to cisgender girls for allowing their educational experiences “to be marred by sex discrimination.” 

The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) sent the proposal to California’s Education Department and the California Interscholastic Federation (CIF), which oversees high school sports in the state, late last month following investigations that concluded the agencies were violating Title IX, the federal law against sex discrimination in schools. 

President Trump’s administration has argued since his return to power in January that Title IX prohibits schools from allowing transgender student-athletes to compete on girls and women’s sports teams. At a signing ceremony for a February executive order opposing their participation, Trump said he was putting schools that refuse to kick trans girls off girls sports teams “on notice” and threatened their funding. 

He took explicit aim at California in May, writing on Truth Social that he would pull “large scale federal funding” from the state if it did not take immediate action to prevent a transgender 16-year-old from competing in a state high school track-and-field championship meet later that month. 

State officials refused, and the student shared the second- and first-place podiums with other girls at the state finals in Clovis, Calif., in June, after the CIF changed its competition rules to allow additional students to compete and medal in events where she qualified. 

In a brief communication to the OCR on Monday, California Education Department General Counsel Len Garfinkel wrote that the department “respectfully disagrees with OCR’s analysis, and it will not sign the proposed resolution agreement.” In a separate letter, Diane Marshall-Freeman, general counsel to the CIF, said the organization would also not sign the proposed agreement. 

Education Secretary Linda McMahon, who posted screenshots of both letters on her official X account, criticized the responses and said earlier comments by California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) expressing some reservations about allowing transgender girls to compete against and alongside cisgender girls were “empty political grandstanding.” 

The California governor and likely contender for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination said during a March episode of his “This is Gavin Newsom” podcast that he found transgender athletes participating in girls and women’s athletics “deeply unfair.” He told reporters the following month that he would be “open” to a conversation about limiting trans athletes’ participation if it were conducted “in a way that’s respectful and responsible and could find a kind of balance.” 

McMahon said on Tuesday that Newsom would soon hear from Attorney General Pam Bondi, emphasizing a provision in the proposed resolution agreement that California’s Education Department and the CIF would face “imminent enforcement action,” including by the Justice Department, if an agreement were not reached by July 7. 

A spokesperson for Newsom did not immediately return a request for comment. 

The Department of Justice is already investigating whether a 2013 California law protecting the right of transgender student-athletes to participate in sports consistent with their gender identity violates Title IX. 

California’s refusal to comply with the administration’s demands to ban trans students from girls and women’s sports comes days after the University of Pennsylvania agreed to do so following a similar OCR investigation.  

The school, Trump’s alma mater, also agreed to remove from its leaderboard individual women’s swimming records set by Lia Thomas, a former student and the first transgender woman to win an NCAA Division I national championship. 

For months, the Trump administration has been locked in a battle over transgender athletes’ participation in Maine, which, like California, has refused to ban trans girls from girls school sports despite the White House’s demands.