Mother of transgender athlete AB Hernandez determined to push through protests

“Girls across California will continue losing placements, safety and opportunities that they rightfully earned,” said former Vanguard University soccer player Sophia Lorey, who is the outreach director of California Family Council.

Read more: Trans athletes face intense efforts to sideline them. These California teens are resisting

Nereyda said this year hasn’t been as bad as a year ago when Hernandez was first thrust into a national anti-trans backlash.

“Once they started posting [online] about their protest, I thought, ‘Wow, it's going to be another crazy year,’” she said. “But no, on the outside, they had maybe, maybe 10 people. … They're there to target one child, but they affect all of them.”

California’s two leading Republican gubernatorial candidates, businessman Steve Hilton and Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, sent statements that were read at the rally against Hernandez’s participation. Shaw also participated in the protest.

Hernandez competed in girls’ volleyball the past three seasons and has stayed in the news cycle whenever she competes in track events.

“I told AB, this is a [midterm] election year,” Nereyda said. “They’re gonna hit us hard, because they’re using us for their campaigns.”

Several sports governing bodies have banned trans girls and women from women’s sports since Trump’s executive order in January 2025 that directs federal agencies to restrict transgender women and girls from participating in women’s sports. But the California high school athletics governing body has resisted, sparking outrage from anti-trans groups.

Read more: Transgender track athlete wins gold in California state championships despite Trump threat

Nereyda constantly reminds people that Hernandez’s participation does not violate any California law or CIF bylaw and she doesn’t block anyone else from participating in competition.

“She has been doing this sport since freshman year [of high school],” Nereyda said. “She’s not doing anything wrong.”

On Saturday, Hernandez placed first in three events at the CIF Southern Section Division 3 preliminaries — triple jump, long jump and a five-way tie for high jump — a year after she won two state titles in triple jump and high jump. (She earned silver in the long jump.) Hernandez’s triple jump and long jump scores this weekend were the state’s best marks this season, but behind state records.

Protesters have demanded Hernandez and other trans girls not be allowed to compete with cisgender girls at all, regardless of CIF’s inclusion rules.

“These young women trained for years for this moment, and they deserve a level playing field,” Lorey said in the press conference. “The CIF’s policy doesn’t protect inclusion; it destroys it. Girls’ sports exist because women fought for them. We will fight for them again.”

Read more: California sues Justice Dept. over demand that school districts ban trans athletes

The Justice Department is suing California over its transgender athlete participation rules, while the U.S. Department of Education has expanded investigations into multiple California schools and athletic organizations over what it calls Title IX violations tied to trans athletes competing in women’s sports.

Hernandez is poised to face more backlash in the coming weeks, but Nereyda said they are ready for it.

“It’s just the outsiders,” Nereyda said. “They’re infiltrating, pretending they’re parents or they know people, but I’m the mom. I know who they are.”

Hernandez will compete in the Southern Section finals next weekend with the goal of closing her high school athletics career in three weeks at the state track and field championships in Clovis.

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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.