Post Detail

California school official compared 'Save Girls Sports' shirt to swastika, rebuked girls wearing it: lawsuit

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." 

"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."

Taylor and Kaitlyn, two cross-country athletes at a high school in Riverside, CA, sued the district for allegedly impeding on their First Amendment rights and Title IX violations. (Courtesy of Kaitlyn and Taylor)

"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.

Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers argued that Assembly Bill 377 "ignores" a 2015 policy created by the Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association (WIAA) to govern the eligibility of transgender high school athletes in the state. (ALLISON DINNER/AFP via Getty Images)

"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.

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.

Taylor and Kaitlyn are cross-country runners in RUSD. (iStock)

Fox News Digital has reached out to the Riverside Unified School District and Martin Luther King High School for comment.