Dan Slavin, a construction subcontractor in California, has parented his daughter Kaitlyn through an experience no one in their family expected this school year.
Over the summer, she received news that Martin Luther King High School, where Kaitlyn competes in cross country, would be getting a new transfer student who would compete on Kaitlyn’s team. That student was a transgender athlete.
Slavin says she and other parents immediately contacted the school about it.
“We went there with concerns about safety and locker room issues,” Slavin. told Fox News Digital. “He was very quiet and quiet. They understood our concerns and said they were working on fixing things to keep our kids safe, but not too much. They just sat there.”
Slavin, a California native who competed in cross country as well as track and basketball in high school, wanted his daughter to compete in sports to benefit from the lessons in work ethic and teamwork.
But the idea of Kaitlyn sharing the locker room and field with a biological male made her “anxious.”
California state law protects the inclusion of transgender athletes in girls’ and women’s sports and requires public schools to comply with these protections.
California Governor Gavin Newsom has been a staunch defender of these policies during his tenure and vetoed a bill that would have required schools to notify athletes and their families when a transgender athlete is on their team.
Newsom signed nine LGBTQ+ rights bills in a matter of days in 2023 and this year he signed the Support Academic Futures and Educators for Youth Today Act (SAFETY Act), which allows teachers to provide information to students and parents of a transgender student. Prevents from informing. Biological sex.
“I would love to sit down and have lunch with him to talk to him about it and see how it goes,” Slavin said. “I would probably just tell him I want everyone to feel included, but you don’t see how many people it’s actually affecting and hurting.”
After transitioning as a transgender athlete, Slavin, her daughter, and the other girls on the team learned how these laws affect female athletes. Kaitlyn’s teammate and co-captain Taylor lost her varsity spot to that athlete this season.
“It has been tough for him. She was there with her teammates and her teammates were crying,” Slavin said. “She’s trying to balance how to still love everyone and how to raise awareness.
“There’s not a disgusting bone in his little body.”
So Kaitlyn, Taylor and some of their other teammates decided to take a stand against it, as so many other young female athletes across the country have done this year. They did this by creating custom T-shirts that read, “Save Girls Sports.”
But when they arrived at the high school wearing those shirts, administrators allegedly scolded them and compared the shirts to swastikas, according to a lawsuit filed against the school by the families of both girls.
“I didn’t even know how to digest it right away,” Slavin said. “There were no words. Even today I am not able to digest it. This is unfathomable. This is strange. This is strange. I’m sure they could have used better illustrations in place of that picture.”
Julian Fleischer, the attorney representing Kaitlyn and Taylor in the lawsuit, told Fox News Digital that the rhetoric from school administrators is “incredibly dangerous.”
“When you have adults who compare the ‘Save Girls Sports’ message to one that promotes equality, fairness, common sense; When you have adults who compare that message to the swastika, which represents the genocide of millions of Jews, there are really, no words. I don’t know how you react to that,'” Fleischer said.
The administration’s comparison and subsequent lawsuit inspired other students to get involved.
Hundreds of students at Martin Luther King High School started wearing the T-shirts every Wednesday.
The school responded by enforcing a dress code which resulted in many of those students being sent to detention. But this did not stop them. Students continued to wear the shirts weekly.
The school recently stopped enforcing its dress code on shirts.
Slavin said he has seen about 400 students at Martin Luther King High School wearing them, and sources told Fox News that nearby schools Arlington High School, Riverside Polytechnic High School and Romona High School have also required their students to wear them. Have been seen wearing these.
For Slavin, who has seen his daughter win titles and MVP awards throughout her young sports career, this movement is his proudest moment as the father of an athlete. But it has also come with some criticism from transgender inclusion activists on social media.
“The message gets disputed as an attack on people, and it’s not about that at all. We want everyone to feel loved, everyone to feel included, but some people don’t see the common sense side of it,” Slavin said.
But Slavin said that won’t stop him and his family from continuing their activism on the issue.
Riverside Unified School District is holding a board meeting next Thursday, and parents are expected to attend and speak out against policies that have enabled transgender inclusion in girls sports.
Additionally, Slavin said his family could also use it as a new platform for political activism in the 2026 California gubernatorial election if the issue is not resolved.
“If nothing changes here in the next few years, this should definitely be part of the next election,” he said.
“I’d like to see a change in policies,” Slavin said. “I keep saying the system is broken, and it’s doing more harm than good. And I want to see people understand that and accept that. Sometimes, we make mistakes, and it’s okay to admit it, but we need to make changes and grow out of the mistakes we make.
(TagstoTranslate)US News(T)California(T)High School(T)Transgender Athlete(T)Transgender Rights
