The California Coastal Commission has drawn a line in the sand: Allow transgender surfers to compete, or you’ll be in violation of the Coastal Act.

A two-day surf contest happening this weekend in Huntington Beach, California, found itself at the center of a hotly debated topic: Whether trans athletes should be allowed to compete in the gender division they identify with or the gender they were born as – a question many sports organizers are facing as equality and fairness are argued among both sides.

A few weeks ago, Australian transgender surfer Sasha Jane Lowerson said she approached the organizer of this weekend’s inaugural Huntington Beach Longboard Pro about entering the women’s competition, but told surf website Inertia she never heard back, even after submitting the entry form and fees.

Todd Messick, founder of the newly formed American Longboard Association and organizer of the Huntington Beach event, said via text message on Thursday, May 9, he received her entry fee, but no follow-up paperwork. If Lowerson met the requirements set by the International Surfing Association, he said she would have been added into the contest.

The Coastal Commission had been contacted on Lowerson’s behalf and sent Messick a letter emphasizing that “prohibiting or unfairly limiting transgender athletes from competing in this or any surf competition that takes place in the coastal waters of California does not meet the requirements of the public access policies of the Coastal Act.”

And that means an event could possibly be shut down, the letter said, because “the Coastal Act includes policies that explicitly identify the need to ensure equality and environmental justice and allows the commission to use this lens in its regulatory decision making related to activities occurring in the coastal zone.”

In the same letter, the Coastal Commission also said that a conversation with Messick showed a commitment to follow the ISA Transgender Policy to allow transgender women to compete in the women’s division if they meet requirements.

This is not the first time the Coastal Commission has weighed in on equal access debates, requiring a big-wave event at Mavericks to include women in order to obtain permitting to run the event on a public beach in 2016.

Lowerson, of Australia, made international headlines after winning women’s divisions for the Western Australian State Titles. She recently made public that she was born intersex, a term describing people born with reproductive anatomy that doesn’t fit the binary designations of male and female gender, according to the Inertia.

Messick initially addressed the subject in an online video posted in late April, saying he did not expect to have to address the issue so early in organizing the new event but that the contest would be aligned with International Surfing Association transgender policies, which allows entry for gender identification based on testosterone levels. But later in the video, he also said the contest would support biological males and biological females in their respective divisions, which appeared to differ from the ISA policy.

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