A school board meeting in California descended into explosive debate after a girls’ volleyball team forfeited to an opponent with a transgender player. 

The players on the Riverside Poly High School girls’ volleyball team chose to forfeit last Friday’s game against Jurupa Valley High School. Multiple parents previously told Fox News Digital the forfeit was in response to the presence of trans athlete AB Hernandez on the Jurupa Valley team.

Local parents showed up to the Riverside Unified School District board meeting on Thursday to speak out in support of the girls who forfeited and against the school district for its current gender policies, while others spoke in support of trans athletes in girls’ sports. 

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Hernandez’s mother, Nereyda Hernandez, showed up to defend AB’s right to play in girls’ sports, and condemned board member Amanda Vickers for previously interviewing with Fox News Digital about the forfeit last week. 

“Amanda Vickers, you interviewed with Fox. You actually entertained and welcomed harassment to my child. You are a board member. You have an oath to protect, to support all children, not just the ones that fit your ideas, your beliefs,” Hernandez said. 

“When you allow or tolerate targeted harassment, whether online, in person or allowing false narratives to be spread at board meetings, you are only failing morally.

“My daughter is not the problem. The problem is coordinated external efforts often led by individuals that travel from district to district… to spread fear and put parents against each other using religion as a shield for discrimination. This has nothing to do with fairness in sports and everything to do with erasing transgender children.”

One mother, Maria Correo, spoke in support of the Riverside Poly players and condemned parents enabling male children to play in girls’ sports.

“The girls, great job. Poly girls, we stand with you. Keep fighting, because these parents that support their confused child are the problem,” Correo said. “If my child was on drugs, I would love him, but guess what? I would tell him the truth; drugs are bad for you. I would not feed him more drugs.”

Riverside became a hotbed of controversy involving trans athletes in girls’ sports last year during Hernandez’s highly-publicized season and after a lawsuit was filed by two girls at Martin Luther King High School that alleged a trans athlete took one of the girls’ varsity spots on the cross-country team. 

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The students at the school then began wearing the “Save Girls Sports” T-shirts every week in response after school administrators allegedly compared the shirts to swastikas, according to the lawsuit. 

One mother, who only identified herself as Sandy R., urged the board members to adopt their own resolution to ban trans athletes from girls’ sports, breaking from state law. One school board in California has already done this – the Kern County Board of Education, earlier in August. Sandy R. referenced the lawsuit that had been filed by the two students.

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“I will be so proud and so honored that an RUSD family will be the ones that take down an unlawful and unconstitutional California law,” she said. 

President Donald Trump warned California and Gov. Gavin Newsom about the state’s transgender policies in a post on Truth Social on Thursday. 

“Any California school district that doesn’t adhere to our Transgender policies, will not be funded. Thank you for your attention to this matter!” Trump wrote in the post.

Riverside Unified School District board meetings featured several tense moments that went viral last fall amid the controversy at Martin Luther King High School. 

Meanwhile, AB Hernandez was the focus of a national media firestorm in May during the athlete’s run to a California girls’ track and field championship. The postseason meets that Hernandez competed in were met with protests by female athletes and their families, who often wore the “Save Girls Sports” T-shirts.

In July, the Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against the California Department of Education (CDE) and CIF for its policies that have allowed biological males to compete in girls’ sports across the state despite Trump signing an executive order in February to prohibit it. 

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A bipartisan survey by the Public Policy Institute of California found a majority of California residents oppose biological male trans athletes competing in women’s sports. 

That figure included more than 70% of the state’s school parents.

“Most Californians support requiring transgender athletes to compete on teams matching the sex they were assigned at birth,” the poll stated. 

“Solid majorities of adults (65%) and likely voters (64%) support requiring that transgender athletes compete on teams that match the sex they were assigned at birth, not the gender they identify with. An overwhelming majority of public school parents (71%) support such a requirement.”

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