Washington state officials say they will not change the rule letting students compete by gender identity, even as a Puyallup-area teenager asks the Supreme Court for emergency relief after she says she was sexually assaulted by a male opponent during a girls’ wrestling match.
The Washington Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) and the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association (WIAA) both responded this week after K.M.K. and her mother, Stephanie Lynne Brown, asked Justice Elena Kagan for an injunction pending appeal. The plaintiff is Kallie Keeler, who alleges she was sexually assaulted by a male competitor during a girls’ match in December and was never told beforehand that her opponent was male.
OSPI, which enforces state law on school athletics but does not administer it directly, made clear nothing is changing.
“While OSPI does not oversee athletics in our state, our office is responsible for communicating, upholding, and enforcing the law, including in student athletics and extracurricular activities,” the office told OutKick. “OSPI will continue to uphold Washington’s current law unless or until the law changes. OSPI does not have any non-privileged statement, board notice, or guidance that we have issued to schools or staff regarding this appeal.”
The WIAA gave a similarly firm answer, while declining to engage with the pending litigation directly.
“The WIAA remains committed to following Washington State law which permits student-athletes to participate in sports consistent with the gender with which they identify,” the association said. “If state law changes in the future, the WIAA holds the authority to revise policies as necessary to remain in compliance with state law. The WIAA will not comment further on a matter in litigation.”
Neither statement addressed what Keeler’s lawyers are actually asking for: that she be allowed to wrestle this season without being matched against a male opponent, or that her mother at minimum be given advance notice so she can opt her daughter out without penalty. Washington’s wrestling season opens in mid-November.
A State That Rejected Trump’s Order Outright
The dispute traces back to February 2025, when Superintendent Chris Reykdal flatly rejected a Trump executive order aimed at keeping male athletes out of girls’ and women’s sports. In a Feb. 6 statement, Reykdal said the order tried to force schools to “discriminate against trans female athletes” in exchange for federal funds, and accused it of seeking to “restrict transgender girls from participating in girls’ sports with their peers.”
He called the order unlawful and said it conflicted with the Washington Law Against Discrimination and state school rules, adding: “Our state law prohibits discrimination on the basis of gender identity, and we will not back down from that.”
Days later, Reykdal pushed further, questioning the biological categories themselves.
“It is quite simply inaccurate to say, biologically, that there are only boys and there are only girls,” he said. “There’s a continuum. There’s a science to this. There are children who are born intersex. There are children whose hormones and whose chromosomes are not consistent with their sex at birth.”
He told districts that students “get to identify and participate based on the gender in which they identify,” and said of the roughly quarter-million students in Washington interscholastic activities, only “roughly five to 10 youth have identified themselves as trans.” “If we can’t accommodate the needs of five or 10 people,” he said, “who are we?” Reykdal has maintained that an executive order is not law and cannot override state policy.
The Case Behind the Appeal
Alliance Defending Freedom filed the emergency Supreme Court application after a federal judge in Tacoma denied a preliminary injunction on Aug. 23, and the Ninth Circuit refused an injunction pending appeal on Sept. 25. The filing argues the WIAA’s gender-identity policy violates Title IX and Brown’s parental rights, and leans on the Supreme Court’s June 30 ruling in West Virginia v. B.P.J., which held that states may limit girls’ teams to biological females.
Keeler has wrestled since she was 4 years old. She left her team in January, after the Lady Jag Kickoff tournament, and has said she doesn’t know whether she’ll return if she can again be paired against a male opponent without warning. The district has previously told her mother that forfeiting the match was the only remedy available, and that it would not provide advance notice of an opponent’s sex.
The Puyallup School District did not respond to a request for comment.
