California education officials have formally rejected the Trump administration’s demand to bar transgender girls from girls school sports teams, escalating tensions between the Golden State and the White House.

The state’s Department of Education on Monday declined to sign a proposed resolution agreement with the administration that would have required it to instruct schools across California to ban trans girls from girls sports; adopt “biology-based” definitions of the terms “male” and “female;” strip transgender female athletes of their titles and records and apologize to cisgender girls for allowing their educational experiences “to be marred by sex discrimination.”

The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) sent the proposal to California’s Education Department and the California Interscholastic Federation (CIF), which oversees high school sports in the state, late last month following investigations that concluded the agencies were violating Title IX, the federal law against sex discrimination in schools.

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