California Governor Gavin Newsom has once again managed to turn common sense into a political piñata, signing Assembly Bill 749 into law and birthing something called the “Sports Equity Commission.” If that name sounds like a woke word salad tossed by a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion committee after a three-hour yoga class, that’s because it is. Rather than defend girls’ sports from being overrun by biological males in lipstick and leggings, Newsom’s grand plan is to “reimagine” youth sports through the prism of social justice. Translation: say goodbye to fair play, and hello to feelings-based athletics.
AB 749 is being sold as a revolutionary step toward “equity” in youth sports. But don’t be fooled. This isn’t about giving kids more opportunities to play ball. It’s about rewriting the rules to suit a radical left agenda that believes biology is just a suggestion. The bill’s author, Assemblywoman Tina McKinnor, delivered a monologue that could’ve been written by a Berkeley sociology professor after too much kombucha. She bemoaned “hyper-competitive leagues” and “pay-to-play models,” but somehow forgot to mention the biggest elephant in the locker room: boys competing against girls.
Title IX, the federal law passed in 1972 to protect women’s sports and ensure equal opportunities for girls, is being trampled like a welcome mat outside a San Francisco dispensary. And Newsom is leading the stampede. Instead of affirming that girls’ sports should be for, you know, girls, he’s creating commissions and panels and “blue-ribbon” this and “inclusive landscapes” that. All of it is just a shiny distraction from the real issue: fairness. And fairness has been benched in California.
President Donald Trump, in true Trumpian fashion, has made it clear: states like California that continue to allow biological males to compete in girls’ sports are in violation of Title IX, and that means federal funding is on the chopping block. The Department of Justice reinforced that message, stating plainly that Title IX was meant to protect biological females, not serve as a backdoor for boys to snatch scholarships, trophies, and track titles from girls who actually followed the rules of biology.
The California Interscholastic Federation, the state’s governing body for high school sports, is still playing cheerleader for this gender identity charade. Their policy? Let athletes play on teams consistent with their “gender identity.” Which means if little Johnny wakes up one morning and decides he’s Janet, he gets a spot on the girls’ volleyball team. And if you object? Well, clearly you’re not inclusive enough for the People’s Republic of California.
And then there’s the Play Equity Fund, the nonprofit sponsor of this nonsense. They claim “access to play is a social justice issue,” which is a fancy way of saying “we are here to destroy girls’ sports using taxpayer money.” Their president, Renata Simril, rakes in over half a million dollars a year to promote the idea that fairness in sports is oppressive and that “social justice through sport” is the new mission. Who knew destroying competition could be so lucrative?
Let’s be clear: AB 749 isn’t about access, opportunity, or inclusion. It’s a Trojan horse, stuffed with leftist ideology and wheeled into California schools under the cover of compassion. But what it really delivers is the erasure of girls from their own spaces, the degradation of competitive integrity, and the mocking of decades of progress under Title IX.
Newsom and his allies aren’t fixing youth sports. They’re hijacking them. They’re using feel-good buzzwords to dismantle the very structures that gave girls a fair shot in the first place. If California wants to play make-believe with gender, that’s their business. But don’t expect the rest of the country—or the Trump administration—to fund the fantasy.
