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A California Surfing Contest Cannot Exclude Trans Women, State Agency Rules

samantha riedel
·4 min read
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Courtesy of Marie-Kristin Krause, @island__visuals 

After the organizers of a surfing competition attempted to block a transgender surfer from competing in its women’s category, the California Coastal Commission affirmed this week that such restrictions constitute illegal discrimination under state law.

Last month, Australian surfer Sasha Jane Lowerson entered the American Longboarding Association’s (ALA) Huntington Beach Longboard Pro competition, scheduled to take place on May 11, but said she never heard back from its organizer, ALA founder Todd Messick. Instead, Messick posted about her registration publicly on Instagram, telling his followers that his event would separate “biological males” and “females” based on sex assigned at birth, according to surfing news site The Inertia.

Although Messick claimed ALA’s restrictions were in compliance with International Surfing Association (ISA) policies, Lowerson accused him of having “cherry picked” which rules to abide by. In 2023, the ISA adopted new rules that allow trans women to compete in women’s competitions after suppressing their testosterone levels for at least one year.

“It leaves me to believe that they [the ALA] would not stop at anything to let any rules slip or slide,” Lowerson wrote on Instagram in April, “or adding anything they want to add in at any point of time if that’s the behavior that they’re going to demonstrate from the beginning. It’s pretty shameful and shady really!”

Sabrina Brennan, co-founder of the athletic advocacy group Surf Equity, said she attempted unsuccessfully to contact Messick about his restrictions. When she did not receive a response, Brennan contacted the California Coastal Commission, which governs the development of and access to all land along California’s coast. On May 7, the commission informed Messick that he must allow trans women to compete alongside cis women, citing a section of the state Coastal Act that bars discrimination based on sex, sexual orientation, or “genetic information.”

“They [the Commission] understand the coast is for everyone,” Brennan told The Inertia. “The ocean is for everyone. Some guy can’t block access based on somebody’s gender identity.” In an interview with the Los Angeles Times this week, Brennan also connected Messick’s stance with “a Republican and religious agenda” targeting LGBTQ+ people throughout the U.S. and abroad. “The entire LGBTQ community is being negatively impacted. There’s a lot of damage happening,” she explained.

Despite the mandate from state officials, Lowerson will not appear in the Huntington Beach competition this weekend. Lowerson’s name was not shown on a list of competitors posted to ALA’s Instagram account on Thursday, and she told The Inertia she decided not to compete after receiving no communication from Messick and the ALA.

Rules affecting transgender athletes’ participation in sports have proliferated in recent years, especially in aquatic sports, where former collegiate swimmer Lia Thomas’ NCAA wins sparked intense backlash, lawsuits, and new rules barring trans people from competitions (or forcing them into unpopulated categories of their own). Surfing has been no exception, with some cis women surfers like Bethany Hamilton refusing to compete with trans women outright.

Surfer Sasha Jane Lowerson Is Fighting for Trans Inclusion in Pro Sports

Last year, Lowerson became the first out trans woman to win a surf competition.

Despite frequent assertions that trans women possess an inherent advantage over cis women in most sports due to testosterone-dominant puberty, studies have found no clear evidence to indicate this is true. One recent meta-analysis, sponsored by the International Olympic Committee, found that trans women may actually be at a deficit when competing against cis women in metrics like jump height and lower body strength. Still, even some non-athletic competitions have introduced trans bans, most bafflingly the International Chess Federation.

Bans and restrictions that rely on “biological sex” as observed at birth are also of little use when dealing with intersex athletes — including Lowerson herself. Speaking to The Inertia, Lowerson said she didn’t enter puberty until her 20s, and only found out she had been born intersex years later, when a medical scan showed internal scar tissue from a nonconsensual operation of which even her parents were unaware. Lowerson explained she didn’t share that personal information for some time, out of fear that it would be used to exclude other trans women from competing.

“I kept that to myself for a few years because I felt that it would muddy the waters,” Lowerson explained.

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Originally Appeared on them.

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