Unhinged dad banned from high school basketball games after accusing player of being trans

A Utah dad was banned from his high school-aged daughter’s future junior varsity basketball games after he became belligerent at a recent game, alleging that a player on the opposing team was transgender.

Jeff Haney, a spokesperson for Canyons School District, told The Salt Lake Tribune that at a January 19 game, the dad “was vocally challenging the eligibility of the player based on his perception of the student-athlete’s gender.”

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The man, whose name has not been disclosed, reportedly confronted the principals of both his daughter’s school and the opposing school, who assured him that every player on the court, including the 17-year-old girl in question, had met the Utah High School Athletics Association’s eligibility requirements to play. The Utah High School Athletics Association (UHSAA) requires student-athletes to provide a birth certificate verifying their gender and for trans students to prove that they have undergone at least one year of hormone therapy.

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“I wasn’t born yesterday, I know that’s a boy and you better be able to prove yourself because I am going to the top,” the man insisted after the game, according to one principal.

Haney said the man became so belligerent that he was asked to leave, and the principal of his daughter’s school banned him from future games. “We do not tolerate people coming into our community and our schools and harassing our student-athletes,” Haney said.

The January 19 incident is just the latest instance of parents questioning a student athlete’s gender to occur in Utah since the state’s legislature passed H.B. 11 in 2022. The law, which bans transgender girls in grades K–12 from participating in girls’ sports, has been halted while a legal challenge brought by the families of three transgender students plays out in court.

In 2022, the parents of two girls who came in second and third place in a Utah track event filed complaints demanding that the UHSAA investigate the gender of the girl who came in first place. David Spatafore, a spokesperson for the UHSAA, said that he had also received other complaints that the student did not “look feminine enough.” But, Spatafore said, “The school went back to kindergarten and she’d always been a female.”

The Salt Lake Tribune reports that other similar incidents have also occurred, but the UHSAA has not said how often or how many.

Equality Utah policy director Marina Lowe said that such incidents provide “a preview of what we’re going to see, especially now that we’re putting in place even more legislation that essentially allows the public to sit in a place of judgment or assessment of people’s physical characteristics and whether they’re feminine enough or masculine enough to be in certain spaces.”

LGBTQ+ advocates have warned that transgender sports bans and bathroom bills could be used to police people’s gender presentation. Some states, like Idaho, have required genital examinations in their sports bans. Such requirements would have subjected students under investigation to unnecessary and invasive examinations.

“This doesn’t just harm the trans community. It really harms us all,” Lowe said. “Because once we get in the business of policing someone’s appearance… all of us are going to be subject to this sort of inquiry potentially.”