EXCLUSIVE: Two high school cross-country runners and their families are suing a California school district, alleging their "Save Girls Sports" T-shirts were likened to a swastika.
Plaintiffs Kaitlyn and Taylor, two athletes at Martin Luther King High School in ninth and eleventh grade, respectively, wore T-shirts bearing the messages "Save Girls’ Sports" and "It’s Common Sense. XX ≠ XY."
The girls wore the shirts after a transgender athlete, who didn’t consistently attend practices or meet key varsity eligibility requirements, was placed on the varsity team, displacing Taylor from her spot, the complaint alleged.
"My initial reaction was like, I was really surprised, because it was like, why is this happening to me?" Taylor told Fox News Digital. "There's a transgender student on the team. Why am I getting displaced when I worked so hard and gone to all of the practices, and this student has only attended a few of the practices."
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Athletic department school officials allegedly forced the students to remove or conceal the shirts, claiming they created a "hostile" environment and comparing wearing these shirts to wearing a swastika in front of Jewish students.
"It was definitely hard to hear because we're by no means trying to be hateful," Kaitlyn told Fox News Digital. "We're just wearing a shirt that expresses what we believe in trying to raise awareness to a situation."
The transgender athlete, however, has been allegedly allowed to wear "trans pride" bracelets, and the school allows other forms of social messaging around campus, including a LGBTQ pride flag, the complaint noted.
"The biological male transgender athlete who displaced T.S. on the girls’ varsity team had recently transferred from another local high school after breaking that school’s all-time cross-country record for the girls’ cross-country team," the complaint said.
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"T.S., who had held a position on the girls’ Varsity Top 7 since August 2024 was removed from the girls’ Varsity Top 7 to make room on the girls’ Varsity Top 7 for an eleventh-grade transgender student and T.S. was relegated to the junior varsity team for one of the most important meets of the season for college recruitment," the complaint said.
According to the girls' Advocates for Faith and Freedom attorney, Julianne Fleischer, the lawsuit claims there were violations of their First and Fourteenth Amendment rights and their Title IX protections.
In October, according to the complaint, the district’s Title IX coordinator, Bethany Scott, informed Taylor's mother of a formal investigation into her complaint. Scott also conveyed that Taylor would not be disadvantaged by running on the junior varsity team at a key upcoming cross-country meet, but her mother argued it would harm her chances of being noticed by college scouts. By Nov. 1, after follow-ups, the district reclassified the Title IX complaint as a confidential personnel matter, claiming it did not meet the criteria for sex-based discrimination.
Typically, multiple factors, beyond race times, are considered for varsity selection on the cross-country team They complaint alleges that Taylor's dedication and hard work were overlooked, and the school district failed to provide a clear explanation, forming the basis of the Title IX complaint, Fleisher said.
"We're seeing more and more women and young girls speak up and challenge these policies that are allowing biological boys to join and participate in these sports," Fleischer told Fox News Digital. "And so there's lawsuits that are popping up all around the country. We're hopeful that even with the incoming administration and Congress that we're going to see real positive change to Title IX that actually upholds and safeguards the rights of women to participate in their sports and to be safe and to be able to compete amongst one another."
Under the Biden-Harris administration, Title IX was amended to include discrimination against gender identity and sexual orientation. The Supreme Court ruled against one of Biden's requests in August that would have permitted biological men in women’s bathrooms, locker rooms and dorms in 10 states where there are state-level and local-level rules in place to prevent it.
On the campaign trail, President-elect Donald Trump said he would roll back Biden-Harris policies on gender treatments for minors and protect women in sports.
Fox News Digital has reached out to the Riverside Unified School District and Martin Luther King High School for comment.
