Father of female runner forced to compete with trans athlete shares fury of situation: 'Can't even digest it'
EXCLUSIVE: Dan Slavin, a construction subcontractor in California, has parented his daughter Kaitlyn through an experience no one in their family expected this school year.
Over the summer, they got word Martin Luther King High School, where Kaitlyn competes in cross country, would be getting a new transfer student who would be competing on Kaitlyn's team. That student was a transgender athlete.
Slavin says he and other parents contacted the school about it immediately.
"We went in there with concerns about safety and locker room issues," Slavin told Fox News Digital. "They were very tight-lipped and quiet. They understood our concerns and said they were working on putting things in place for our children's safety, but not much. They just kind of sat there."
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Slavin, a California native who also competed in cross country, as well as track and basketball, in high school, wanted his daughter to compete in sports to benefit from lessons in work ethic and teamwork.
But the idea of Kaitlyn having to share a locker room and field with a biological male made him "concerned."
California state law protects the inclusion of transgender athletes in girls and women's sports and requires public schools to comply with these protections. California Gov. Gavin Newsom has been a staunch protector of these policies during his tenure and vetoed a bill that would require schools to notify athletes and their families when a transgender athlete is on their team.
Newsom signed nine LGBTQ+ rights bills into law within a matter of days in 2023, and this year he signed the Support Academic Future and Educators for Today’s Youth Act (SAFETY Act) into law, which bans teachers from notifying students and parents of a transgender student's biological sex.
"I'd love to sit down and have lunch with him to talk to him about this and see how that goes," Slavin said. "I would probably just tell him that I get you want everybody to feel included, but you're missing out on how many people it's actually affecting and hurting."
Slavin, his daughter and other girls on the team learned how those laws affect female athletes after the transgender athlete transferred in. Kaitlyn's teammate and co-captain, Taylor, lost her varsity spot to that athlete this season.
"It's been tough on her. She's been there with her teammates and her teammate's in tears," Slavin said. "She's been trying to balance out how to still love all people but also how to raise awareness.
"There isn't a hateful bone in her little body."
So Kaitlyn, Taylor and some of their other teammates decided to stand up against it as many other young female athletes across the country have this year. They did it by creating custom T-shirts that said "Save Girls Sports."
But when they showed up to the high school wearing those shirts, administrators allegedly scolded them over it and compared the shirts to swastikas, according to a lawsuit filed against the school by the families of the two girls.
"I didn't even know how to digest that right away," Slavin said. "There were no words. I still can't even digest it this day. It's unfathomable. It's strange. It's weird. I'm sure there were better illustrations they could use instead of that one."
The attorney representing Kaitlyn and Taylor in the lawsuit, Julianne Fleischer, told Fox News Digital the rhetoric from school administrators is "incredibly dangerous."
"When you have adults that compare a message ‘Save Girls Sports’ that promotes equality, fairness, common sense; when you have adults that compare that message to a swastika, which represents the genocide of millions of Jews, really, there are no words. I don't know how you respond to that," Fleischer said.
The administration's comparison and the subsequent lawsuit prompted other students to get involved.
Hundreds of students at Martin Luther King High School began to wear the T-shirts every Wednesday. The school responded by enacting a dress code that resulted in many of those students being sent to detention. But that didn't stop them. The students kept wearing the shirts weekly.
The school recently stopped enforcing its dress code on the shirts. Slavin said he saw around 400 students wearing them at Martin Luther King High School, and sources have told Fox News the surrounding schools of Arlington High School, Riverside Polytechnical High School and Romona High School have also seen their students wearing them.
For Slavin, who has seen his daughter win titles and MVP awards in her youth sports career, this movement is his proudest moment as the father of an athlete. But it's also come with some blowback from transgender inclusion activists on social media.
"The message gets conflicted as an attack on people, and it's not about that at all. We want all people to feel love, all people to feel included, but some people just don't see the common sense side of it," Slavin said.
But Slavin said that won't stop him and his family from continuing their activism on this issue. The Riverside Unified School District is holding a board meeting next Thursday, and parents are expected to attend and speak out against policies that have enabled transgender inclusion in girls' sports.
Beyond that, Slavin said his family may even use it as a new platform for political activism in the 2026 California gubernatorial election if the issue hasn't been resolved.
"If nothing changes here in the next couple of years, it absolutely should be part of the next election," he said.
"I want to see policies change," Slavin added. "I keep saying the system is broken, and it's doing more harm than good. And I want to see people understand that and admit that. Sometimes, we make mistakes, and it's OK to admit that, but we need to make changes and get out of those mistakes we make."