Truckee and North Tahoe High Schools will be staying in the NIAA at least until three court cases pending in the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals are resolved.
On. Oct. 28, the Tahoe Truckee Unified School District (TTUSD) Board of Trustees voted to approve a Stay Agreement between the school district, the California Department of Education and an anonymous coalition of stakeholders and taxpayers of the Tahoe Truckee Unified School District.
During the special meeting on Oct. 28, to consider the agreement, TTUSD Superintendent Kerstin Kramer said attorneys representing the anonymous stakeholders led the negotiations on the agreement.
Kramer said the stay agreement pauses a corrective action ordered by the California Department of Education (CDE) on Sept. 29, 2025, ordering TTUSD to transition from the NIAA to the California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) for the 2026-27 school year. CDE later extended that deadline to the 2027-28 school year.
In April 2025, the NIAA adopted a policy regarding student-athlete eligibility based solely on biological sex, which conflicts with California laws regarding gender identity.
On Oct. 29, 2025, TTUSD requested reconsideration of these corrective actions, citing concerns that crossing Donner Pass in winter would restrict their athletic opportunities for the district’s students and that CIF organizes athletics on a four-year cycle that currently runs through 2028, and a transition in the middle of that cycle would place TTUSD on “independent status” for at least one school year, without meaningful playoff or championship opportunities.
Under the agreement, the CDE agreed not to enforce its action requiring TTUSD to leave NIAA and transition to CIF until 60 days after the final resolution of all appeals in three cases that have been appealed to the Ninth Circuit Court.
The agreement states that the anonymous group of stakeholders contends that those court cases are likely to resolve or produce binding precedent on whether sports can be segregated based on gender identity or biological sex, which they argued preempts the basis for the corrective action. The stakeholders also anticipate that the Supreme Court may ultimately decide that issue.
The stay agreement is effective immediately and ends 60 days after the resolution of the three court cases cited in the agreement.
“It allows our sports program to continue with no disruption, disruptions, while the legal cases make their way through the courts and hopefully resolve this and get our states back on the same page,” Kramer said.
She told the TTUSD Board at the Oct. 28, meeting there’s no way to predict when those cases might be decided and they could take several years.
“I think there's a lot of frustration across the nation about this issue that perhaps it will be move more quickly, but we know that there's many appeals and due process in the justice system,” Kramer said.
All of Truckee’s and North Tahoe’s athletic teams compete in the NIAA except for Nordic skiing and downhill snowboarding, which compete in the CIF.
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