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California Assembly member Bill Essayli is working to get a bill passed through the state legislature that would ban trans athletes from girls' and women's sports.
Essayli introduced the bill on Feb. 14 amid a flury of controversial incidents in the state involving trans athletes playing on girls' sports teams.
As one of the top Republicans in Sacramento, Essayli believes that the incidents have escalated the issue into one of civil rights for people of all religions in the state.
"Not just for Christians, I hear from Muslims and Jewish Americans as well. People of faith have obviously strong values and morals and beliefs about there being two genders and how everyone was created by God into their perfect body," Essayli told Fox News Digital in an exclusive interview. "So it is partially a religious civil rights issue."
California has allowed trans athlete inclusion in girls' and women's sports dating back to 2014 and is currently fighting President Donald Trump to keep that system in place after Trump's recent "No Men in Women's Sports" executive order.
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The district Essayli represents, Riverside, has been mired in one of the most nationally-visible controversies after a trans cross-country runner took a varsity spot from a girl at Martin Luther King High School, and a lawsuit was filed after administrators compared "Save Girls Sports" T-shirts to swastikas.
Meanwhile, communities in San Diego, the Bay Area and those in other Democrat-run states across the U.S. have dealt with their own incidents involving trans athletes over the past year alone. Additionally, while data shows the majority of Americans, including Democrats, oppose trans inclusion in girls' sports, most of the party's officials continue to enable it.
"What I've concluded is that this is part of this Marxist agenda to break the family unit and to divide students from their parents, and if the government can basically take over the role of the parent and instill the values and systems into the child, then they feel like they'll be able to control that child for the rest of their life," Essayli said.
"I really believe this is a play for the next generation of Americans and who's going to raise those kids and I think that's what the Democrat party is focused on, I think that's the long game here, they're making a play for the next generation of voters."
Essayli added that he believes the current system is not only unfair to girls, but also to school employees who have to carry out the system, and that it is also unfair to the transgender students themselves.
"They're being misled into believing that if they identify as a female they should have all the rights and privileges as a biological female, and they are being encouraged to join the female sports teams and use the female locker rooms, and I don't think that's a good situation for the child, they are not going to fit into that environment," Essayli said.
"Maybe there's an alternative sports teams, maybe a co-ed sports teams, maybe have their own facilities to change in, I think there are other solutions that make more sense… if you put a boy in the girls locker room, if they're still a boy, it's going to be uncomfortable for everyone… it creates a lot of problems and it's our policy makers who have set up this problem."
In the short term, Democrat support of trans inclusion in girls' and women's sports has been one of the party's biggest vulnerabilities over the last year. A recent New York Times/Ipsos survey found the vast majority of Americans, including a majority of Democrats, don't think transgender athletes should be permitted to compete in women's sports.
"Thinking about transgender female athletes — meaning athletes who were male at birth but who currently identify as female — do you think they should or should not be allowed to compete in women’s sports?" the survey asked.
Of the 2,128 people who participated, 79% said biological males who identify as women should not be allowed to participate in women's sports.
Of the 1,025 people who identified as Democrats or leaning Democrat, 67% said transgender athletes should not be allowed to compete with women.
Nearly 70% of Americans say biological men should not be permitted to compete in women's sports, according to a Gallup poll last year.
In June 2024, a survey conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago asked respondents whether transgender athletes of both sexes should be permitted to participate in sports leagues that correspond to their preferred gender identity instead of their biological sex. In that survey, 65% answered that it should never or rarely be allowed. When those polled were asked specifically about adult transgender female athletes competing in women’s sports, 69% opposed it.
The issue may have even played a consequential role in November's election.
A national exit poll conducted by the Concerned Women for America legislative action committee found that 70% of moderate voters saw the issue of "Donald Trump’s opposition to transgender boys and men playing girls' and women’s sports and of transgender boys and men using girls' and women’s bathrooms" as important to them.
Additionally, 6% said it was the most important issue of all, while 44% said it was "very important."
Despite this, California Democrats and others across the nation continue to fight to keep trans athletes in girls' locker rooms, even at the risk of losing federal funding, as Trump has vowed to cut it to states that defy his executive order.
However, very few have made public statements in support of it, unlike Republicans who have vocally made it a main point of the party's platform over the last year.
"With the Democrats, a lot of them don't want to talk about it, they say it's not a real issue… they seem to want to be avoiding it," Essayli said. "They know the public support it, so they don't want to talk about it publicly, but they continue to push it behind the scenes."
Essayli believes the public will pick up on this, and the issue will ultimately strengthen Republican support in his state.
"I think the Democrats will continue to double-down on this, and that will be to their detriment," Essayli said. "If the Democrats continue to double-down and oppose that and push their radical ideologies, I think they'll continue to lose elections and seats in the legislature."
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