“Even Gov. Gavin Newsom,” Republicans said during a committee hearing last week, an attempt to stop their colleagues from effectively killing two bills that would have prohibited transgender athletes in women’s sports.
Both bills were voted down during a hearing of the Assembly’s Committee on Arts, Entertainment, Sports and Tourism by Democrats, including Speaker Robert Rivas, who was able to sit in on the committee because a member was absent.
The vote was unsurprising, despite Gov. Gavin Newsom’s recent comments on his podcast — he said he believes it is “deeply unfair” to allow some trans women to compete in women’s sports — and Republicans’ invoking the governor’s words.
“Even Gov. Gavin Newsom, widely considered one of the most pro-LGBTQ governors in our state’s history, said recently, ‘It’s an issue of fairness,’” said Assemblymember Kate Sanchez, R-Rancho Santa Margarita.
Sanchez led the bill that would have required the California Interscholastic Federation, the governing body for high school sports in the state, to prohibit students who were assigned male at birth from participating in girls’ interscholastic sports teams. Sanchez said the effort was to protect women from competing in arenas that would be unfair or unsafe.
“It is not about hate. It is not about fear, and it’s not about a right-wing talking point,” Sanchez said. “This is entirely about fairness, safety and integrity in girls’ competitive high school athletics.”
Newsom set off shockwaves when he said on his inaugural podcast episode last month that the “issue of fairness is completely legit” while talking to conservative activist Charlie Kirk about Republicans’ opposition to allowing transgender women to compete in women’s and girls’ sports.
Democrats and LGBTQ+ activists were upset by Newsom’s comments.
“Sometimes Gavin Newsom goes for the Profile in Courage, sometimes not,” Assemblymember Chris Ward, D-San Diego, and Sen. Caroline Menjivar, D-San Fernando Valley, who lead the Legislative LGBTQ Caucus, said after the podcast episode.
“We woke up profoundly sickened and frustrated by these remarks,” the legislators said. “All students deserve the academic and health benefits of sports activity, and until Donald Trump began obsessing about it, playing on a team consistent with one’s gender has not been a problem since the standard was passed in 2013.”
But Sanchez said Newsom’s comments mattered. She said they reflected the feelings of high school athletes, particularly female athletes. During the committee hearing, Sanchez sat next to a high school track and field athlete, who told legislators that she may not be able to compete at a state championship because a trans athlete is able to compete in her sport.
The other bill that failed was one from then-Assemblymember Bill Essayli, R-Corona, which would have reversed a state law that lets students participate in sex-segregated school programs, like sports, and use facilities that align with their gender identity. (Essayli resigned from the state legislature last week after President Donald Trump picked him to be a U.S. attorney for the Central District of California.)
The high-profile committee hearing was a packed house last week and held in the largest committee hearing room within the historical Capitol, said Ward, who also chairs the Arts, Entertainment, Sports, & Tourism Committee.
Ward said he wanted to see legislators work on more funding and equitable support for girls’ sports and “diminishing the harassment of players online and in-person and that we are combatting some of the exploitation and abuses that we’re seeing by coaches, staff or others in a sports environment.”
Ward and the other Democrats on the committee, including Assemblymember Sharon Quirk-Silva, D-Fullerton, voted against both bills. The two Republicans, Assemblymembers Jeff Gonzalez, R-Indio, and Tom Lackey, R-Palmdale, voted in favor of them.
There are more than 49,000 trans youth aged 13 to 17 in California, according to an estimate from the Williams Institute, a UCLA School of Law group that researches LGBTQ+ issues.
At least 24 states have laws on the books barring transgender women and girls from participating in certain women’s or girls’ sports competitions.
At the federal level, Trump signed an executive order last month aimed at barring transgender athletes from participating in girls’ and women’s sports.
In other news
• A bill meant to crack down on fentanyl dealers cleared the Senate Public Safety Committee last week, albeit with a few changes.
From Sen. Kelly Seyarto, a Republican whose district includes Yorba Linda, the bill would reclassify furnishing fentanyl to a minor as a serious felony, which comes with enhanced sentencing and strips plea bargaining or probation options for offenders.
The bill “sends a strong message,” said Seyarto, “If you knowingly give fentanyl to a child, you will be held responsible.”
Seyarto’s bill originally sought to add the crime to California’s three strikes law — which significantly increases the sentences of people convicted of certain felonies who had also previously been convicted of violent or serious felonies — but that was taken out during the committee process, Seyarto’s office said.
• Senators also last week unanimously approved in committee a bill that criminalizes offering a lottery or other prize-drawing contest to get people to vote.
Sen. Tom Umberg’s SB 398 notes that federal law already prohibits paying someone to register to vote. The bill would ensure that it is a crime to knowingly or willfully pay or offer to pay money or “other valuable consideration,” such as a lottery or similar prize-drawing contest.
For Umberg, D-Santa Ana, the timing of the vote wasn’t lost on him. The vote occurred on the same day as Wisconsin held elections for its Supreme Court. There, Elon Musk, an advisor to President Donald Trump, paid some voters $1 million each. Legal efforts to stop Musk from giving out checks to voters were unsuccessful.
“What Elon Musk has done (in Pennsylvania in 2024) and is doing (in Wisconsin currently) is spit in the face of our founders, longstanding campaign ethics, and federal election law,” said Umberg.
Musk is being sued in Pennsylvania by a man who alleges he was not paid more than $20,000 for getting voters to sign petitions for Musk’s PAC ahead of the November presidential elections.
Meanwhile, three election-related bills from Sen. Steven Choi, R-Irvine, failed to advance out of the same Elections and Constitutional Amendments Committee last week, of which Choi is the vice-chair.
His bills would have let local governments enact voter ID laws, required vote by mail ballots to be counted only if they arrived before polls closed on Election Day, and required elections officials to certify ballots within 10 days of the election.