Republicans Invoke Newsom in a Hearing on Transgender Sports

It was a discussion of a kind rarely, if ever, seen in the California State Capitol. For hours on Tuesday, Republicans repeatedly invoked the views of Gov. Gavin Newsom, while the governor’s fellow Democrats took pains to avoid saying his name.

At issue were two Republican bills that would have banned transgender athletes from female sports, just days after Mr. Newsom had reiterated his personal belief that their participation was unfair to those who were born as girls.

“For the first time ever, Gavin Newsom and I agree,” said Karen England, executive director of the Capitol Resource Institute, a conservative advocacy group.

Democrats, who control the Assembly Committee on Arts, Entertainment, Sports and Tourism, ultimately quashed the bills after dozens of people spoke in a packed hearing room. The debate brought into stark focus an extraordinary rift among California Democrats on the issue of transgender participation in female sports.

Mr. Newsom, a longtime supporter of expanding L.G.B.T.Q. rights, publicly broke with his party last month when he said on his new podcast that he thinks it’s “deeply unfair” for transgender athletes to compete in female sports. The governor repeated that position Friday during an interview on “Real Time With Bill Maher,” in which he also said the Democratic Party brand is “toxic.”

Mr. Newsom has not publicly weighed in on the transgender sports bills, and his office declined to comment on Tuesday. But his recent comments have scrambled the conventional coalitions in California’s Capitol, where Democrats hold a supermajority in the Legislature and occupy every statewide office. While it is common for Democrats to split on bills concerning the environment, economy, crime or education, divisions over L.G.B.T.Q. rights are rare.

“It has certainly inflamed the situation,” Chris Ward, a Democratic assemblyman who leads the L.G.B.T.Q. caucus, said of Mr. Newsom’s recent comments. “He’s allowing himself and the very important position he’s in to be co-opted by the extremist agenda.”

Assemblywoman Kate Sanchez, a Republican, quoted Mr. Newsom’s transgender sports remarks on Tuesday as she presented her bill to prohibit students who were born male from participating in competitive girls’ sports in California schools. So did Assemblyman Bill Essayli, another Republican, whose bill sought to reverse a 2014 law that permits students to use the facilities and play on the teams that correspond with their gender identities.

“To quote Governor Newsom, that right-wing extremist, this is an issue of fundamental fairness,” Mr. Essayli said facetiously, using a phrase that Democrats often hurl at him. “Biology matters, and sports are one of the places where that reality is most obvious.”

The hearing room in the ornate Beaux-Arts building was packed to capacity, and a large spillover crowd filled an adjacent hallway. There were teenagers wearing “Save Girls Sports” T-shirts and families wearing shirts that urged lawmakers to “Protect Trans Kids.” There were also roller derby players, grandmothers, student athletes and political activists who lined up for a turn to speak.

Democrats argued that the bills could harm transgender young people by further alienating a vulnerable population. Some Democrats made the case that lawmakers should instead focus on issues that matter to more people.

“Not a single constituent has ever stopped me in the grocery store, which happens often, to mention to me about who’s on their soccer team — not one,” said Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas, a Democrat, who took the unusual step of addressing Tuesday’s hearing despite not being a member of the committee.

“They talk about housing,” he added. “They ask me about traffic, about crime, about public services such health care, child care. They always have something to say about the D.M.V. Because these are the things that they care about.”

A Times/Ipsos poll this year showed that many Americans do not think the Democratic Party is focused on the economic concerns that they care about most and instead focuses too much on social issues. The same poll showed that 79 percent of Americans, including 67 percent of Democrats, think transgender athletes should not be allowed to play in female sports.

The bills were voted down along party lines in the Democratic-dominated committee — a common occurrence in a Legislature where Republicans hold about one-fourth of the seats.

Republicans who had invoked the governor’s words later castigated him for not supporting their bills.

“If this was a real priority for him, fairness for young women in this state, you’d think he might have been here — you’d think he might have made some calls,” the Assembly’s Republican leader, James Gallagher, said after the hearing.

“But I don’t see Gavin Newsom, because he doesn’t really believe that,” he added, suggesting that Mr. Newsom’s transgender comments had been driven by presidential aspirations.

Still, members of California’s minority party appear newly emboldened by the leverage that the Trump administration and a Republican-led Congress have afforded them. Republican lawmakers in Sacramento said that they hoped the Trump administration could change policy in California by threatening to withhold federal funding from the state.

Days before the hearing, Linda McMahon, President Trump’s education secretary, sent Mr. Newsom a letter that urged him to support Mr. Essayli’s bill.

“Allowing participation in sex-separated activities based on ‘gender identity’ places schools at risk of Title IX violations and loss of federal funding,” Ms. McMahon wrote in a March 27 letter to Mr. Newsom.

The same day, the Trump administration asserted that a California law protecting transgender students from unwanted disclosures to their parents was a violation of federal law. That also came with the threat to pull federal funding from California schools.

The debate in California comes as the Trump administration is trying to prohibit transgender athletes from playing on female teams across the nation. The president signed an executive order in February that bans their participation and directs federal agencies to pull funding from schools that refuse to comply.

A few weeks later, the administration determined that Maine had violated federal law by allowing transgender players on female teams in its public schools and universities after Gov. Janet Mills challenged the president’s order.