Transgender high school student at center of Trump’s threat to remove California funding advances to state championship finals

By Emma Tucker, CNN

(CNN) — A transgender high school student who was pushed into the national spotlight this week after President Donald Trump threatened to withhold federal funding from California over her participation in this weekend’s state track and field championships has advanced to the finals.

A.B. Hernandez, a public high school junior in Southern California, is the athlete at the center of the controversy. She placed first in long jump, first in high jump and first in triple jump on Friday in the preliminary round of the championships, making her qualified to compete in the finals in all three events Saturday.

A small group, mostly women, stood outside the stadium in Clovis, protesting A.B.’s participation in the event while she was competing. Some were holding up signs reading, “Save Girls Sports” and an airplane with a banner reading, “No Boys in Girls’ Sports” was seen flying over the stadium, prompting some protesters to look up and cheer.

“Please be hereby advised that large scale Federal Funding will be held back, maybe permanently, if the Executive Order on this subject matter is not adhered to,” Trump said Tuesday in a post on Truth Social, alluding to his February executive order titled, “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports.”

A.B. qualified for the state meet, prompting the agency governing high school sports in California to allow more cisgender girls – whose gender identity conforms with their sex assigned at birth – to compete.

Coming into the state meet, A.B. ranked first in both long jump and triple jump, and 14th in high jump, according to Mile Split California data.

With trans athletes’ participation in girls’ and women’s sports a legal, political and cultural debate stoked by the political right, the White House has tried to use federal money to get states to align their policies with its ideology. Here’s what we know about the California student athlete at the center of the latest controversy:

California changes state meet rules

At last weekend’s Southern Section Masters Meet, A.B. finished first in the triple jump and long jump, qualifying her for the upcoming state championships – thus preventing lower-ranked competitors from advancing while drawing ire from some in the community.

The California Interscholastic Federation decided at the end of the weekend’s qualifying meets to “pilot an entry process” for the championships, inviting those “biological female” student athletes who would otherwise have earned a qualifying mark – if not for the participation of trans students – an automatic entry to the finals, said in the announcement Tuesday.

The rule change only applies to this weekend’s competition, the federation said without specifying whether the rule will stay in place.

Two athletes coached by Keinan Briggs, who’s not affiliated with specific schools, placed lower in last weekend’s competition than A.B., who attends Jurupa Valley High School.

Skyler Cazale, of Santa Ana’s Calvary Chapel High School, finished third in the triple jump, drawing significant anger from the community, Briggs told CNN.

A.B.’s finish in the long jump also had a “trickle effect,” bumping down Briggs’ student from Irvine’s Woodbridge High School and effectively ending her season, he said.

‘I’m still a child,’ A.B. says

After competing on the track team for three years, this is the first year A.B.’s presence has received backlash, she told Capital & Main earlier this month.

At a track meet earlier this month, she was accompanied by campus security guards and deputies from the Orange County Sheriff’s Department as she faced heckling and protesters in the crowd, Briggs said.

“There’s nothing I can do about people’s actions, just focus on my own. I’m still a child. You’re an adult, and for you to act like a child shows how you are as a person,” said A.B., whose family declined to comment for this story when contacted by CNN.

Still, A.B. has the support of most of the athletes she competes against, she told Capital & Main, adding, “Girls were just shocked that people would actually come to do that, and really bully a child.”

“I’ve trained so hard. I mean, hours of conditioning every day, five days a week. Every day since November, three hours after school. And then all of summer, no summer break for me,” she said. “A few people think I’m brave and strong and they hope to be like me one day. I say, don’t just hope, make it happen.”

But A.B.’s mother recently wound up in a heated exchange with Sonja Shaw, a 2026 candidate for California superintendent of instruction and an activist with the advocacy group Save Girls Sports, which is pushing for a ban on trans girl athletes from girls’ athletics in the state, Capital & Main reported.

“What a coward of a woman you are, allowing that,” Shaw told Nereyda Hernandez, according to the Capital & Main report.

A.B.’s identity “doesn’t give her an advantage; it gives her courage,” her mother said this month on Instagram. “It takes immense bravery to show up, compete, and be visible in a world that often questions your very right to exist, let alone to participate.”

The actions of those who have “doxed, harassed and violated my daughter A.B.’s privacy” are “not only shameful, but they are also abusive” and have created a “hostile and unsafe environment for a minor,” Hernandez added.

Both A.B. and her mother spoke at a Placentia-Yorba Linda Unified School District board of education meeting on April 8. Nereyda Hernandez told the board A.B. is competing at the high school level in girls’ sports in accordance with the law but has faced harassment and stalking.

“We’re supposed to treat all children equal, and we’re supposed to protect our children,” the mother said, adding the team does not feel “unsafe.”

“The girls were cheering and encouraging my child. My child is another girl amongst the team,” Nereyda Hernandez continued.

A.B. referenced the Save Girls Sports group at the meeting, saying: “If you are going to save someone, it should be the girls on my team who all love me and support me, and they’ve told me over and over again that they want me on this team.”

Coach takes aim at ‘the system’

Briggs felt for the Irvine student he coaches and her parents because he “couldn’t give her the emotional support that I typically would give because it wasn’t us, it was the way the system set up that put her in a position to where she couldn’t continue,” he said.

“That’s been hard for her,” Briggs said. “She also understands that the mark was the mark, she needed to hit that, but it comes down to the fairness of the event – the way it’s set up – there was one less biological girl able to compete.”

While many parents and community members are upset, Briggs agrees with those who believe A.B. should compete because there is not a specific category for transgender athletes, he said.

He doesn’t believe the Trump administration should take away California’s federal funding to force its hand on whom to exclude from girls sports. But, he said, the bigger question should be: “How do we give support for all athletes to be able to feel welcome, included, to where they’re able to compete?”

A.B. has been training rigorously, said Briggs, who added he’s watched her “progression throughout the years. She is getting better; she’s doing a great job. However, right now, the debate is where she should be competing.”

Federal money should be used to create resources and opportunities for more student athletes in general, Briggs said.

What the science says

More than half of US states have laws banning school-age trans students from competing on sports teams that align with their gender identity. As many as 122,000 trans youth age 13 to 17 could be participating in high school sports, UCLA Law think tank The Williams Institute estimates, though it’s unclear how many play on teams aligned with their gender identity.

At the core of disagreements over access is whether trans women have unfair physical athletic advantages. Few trans athletes have reached elite levels of sports competition and even fewer have taken home top prizes, but their limited success has fueled the growing movement to ban them from participating on teams consistent with their gender identity.

Research on trans people’s athletic performance is scarce, and there have been no large-scale scientific studies on the topic or on how hormone therapies may affect their performance in specific sport categories, such as running or wrestling.

Trans athletes and advocates, meanwhile, say trans people deserve the right to compete alongside their peers and reap the proven social, physical and mental benefits of sports.

Even among cisgender athletes, bodies and physical abilities vary widely, and traits that may be an advantage in one sport – such as grip strength or bone density – may not be an advantage in others, experts say.

California’s stance on trans athletes

A day after Trump’s threat to withhold federal funding from California over A.B.’s participation in the sporting event, the Justice Department announced it was investigating whether the state’s School Success and Opportunity Act – which in part prohibits public schools from blocking transgender students from participating in school sports – violates the federal Title IX law prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sex in education programs or activities that get federal money.

The Justice Department sent letters to the California Attorney General and the superintendent of public instruction, as well as the California Interscholastic Federation and the Jurupa Unified School District.

The school district said it is required to follow California law and the state federation’s policy regarding school athletics. “Both state law and (California Interscholastic Federation) policy currently require that students be permitted to participate in athletic teams and competitions consistent with their gender identity, irrespective of the gender listed on the pupil’s records,” the Jurupa Unified School District told CNN.

And the California Interscholastic Federation’s pilot rule for the upcoming championships is “reasonable,” a spokesperson for the office of Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat who recently has broken from many progressives’ position on this issue and others.

“Well, I think it’s an issue of fairness. I completely agree with you on that. It is an issue of fairness. It’s deeply unfair,” Newsom said during a March podcast episode with conservative activist Charlie Kirk.

A resolution introduced last week by Placentia-Yorba Linda Unified School District’s board president and designed to make the district compliant with Title IX by only allowing “biological females” to compete in women’s sports failed on a 3-2 vote by the district’s trustees.

The issue of trans student athletes has “been a low roar in our community for the last couple of years,” and complaints started to accelerate after A.B. competed at the district’s Yorba Linda High School, Board President Leandra Blades told CNN.

The federal government should take away California’s funding if trans women are allowed to compete in women’s sporting events and if the new California Interscholastic Federation rule only applies to the one championship meet, Blades said.

Despite misgendering A.B. throughout her interview with CNN, Blades said she doesn’t have “any issues” with the LGBTQ+ community, adding: “I just believe in fairness in women’s sports, and we should follow Title IX.”

The school district prohibits harassment against any student, saying it has done a “very good job with bullying policies and being inclusive to all students.”

The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2025 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.

CNN’s Samantha Waldenberg, Stephanie Elam, Jen Christensen, Elizabeth Wolfe and Julia Vargas Jones contributed to this report.