Clovis track championships draw protest over transgender athlete rules

The CIF State Track and Field Championships at Buchanan High School in Clovis became a test of who actually sets the rules, and what happens when those rules stay unsettled at a major event. The May 29-31, 2025 meet drew protests, a visible police presence and sharp questions over whether Jurupa Valley High School athlete AB Hernandez could compete in girls events.

In the days before the championships, the California Interscholastic Federation announced a pilot entry process meant to let additional biological female athletes into the state meet if they had been displaced from qualifying. Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office said the new approach meant transgender athletes’ events would be scored separately. Hernandez, the only openly transgender athlete reported at the 2025 meet, was entered in the triple jump, high jump and long jump.

Local backlash built quickly in Clovis and Fresno County, where elected officials used a press conference to push back on CIF’s handling of the issue. Clovis Mayor Pro Tem Diane Pearce called for Hernandez to be removed from the competition. Fresno County Supervisor Garry Bredefeld and Clovis Unified School District trustee Tiffany Stoker Madsen also spoke against the policy, while LGBTQ advocate Stetler Brown attended to object to the language used by some speakers and to warn about the impact on LGBTQ youth.

The dispute soon reached far beyond Clovis. The U.S. Department of Justice announced a Title IX investigation into California’s transgender athlete policies, and President Donald Trump threatened to withhold federal funding from the state. California officials pointed to the School Success and Opportunity Act, AB 1266, which has protected student participation consistent with gender identity since 2013, while critics argued the policy was unfair to girls.

On the track, Hernandez advanced after placing first in the qualifying round in all three events, keeping the controversy centered on the championships even as competition continued. After the protests, Clovis city officials said about $21,000 in police overtime was spent responding around the state meet, a concrete cost for a policy dispute that landed squarely on a local host city already managing thousands of spectators, athletes and school officials at Buchanan High School.