A school board in Washington State is seeking help from the federal government to force the state to ban transgender athletes from girls’ sports.
In a filing to the U.S. Department of Education’s Civil Rights Division, the Kennewick School Board filed a Title IX complaint against Washington state’s Superintendent of Public Instruction, Chris Reykdal.
The school board asked the federal government for “urgent” relief against the state’s efforts to defy President Trump’s executive order, “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports.”
“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 school board wrote.
“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 source of the tension stems from the Trump administration’s directive to ban trans athletes from women’s sports or lose federal funding, and Washington State’s determination to continue to permit males to play in female sports.
“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 states.
“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.”
Reykdal stirred controversy earlier this year when she said it was “inaccurate” to say there are only two genders.
“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.”
In that same video, Reykdal said the Trump administration lacks the authority to ban trans athletes from girls’ sports.
Washington State has been the scene of multiple conflicts between a school board and the state’s liberal government.
On February 27, the Tumwater school district voted 3-1 to defy the state and ban trans athletes from girls’ sports.
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