Oregon school district calls out Ted Cruz for releasing anti-transgender ad featuring Oregon high school athletes

Two anti-trans ads by U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz feature a photo of two Oregon high school athletes without consent from the minors’ families, prompting one school district to ask Thursday to pull the ads.

The videos are part of Cruz’s multimillion-dollar campaign to retain his Senate seat and represent Texas in the face of a challenge from Democrat Colin Allred. Both ads condemn Allred’s support for trans women’s right to access women’s spaces. The ads say Allred voted for “boys in girls’ sports” and briefly show a photo of two female student-athletes – neither of whom is trans – at a track and field meet in Oregon.

Oregon students and their families only learned about the ads through a report by the author Hill on Thursday, even though one ad has been running on YouTube since September 16 and the other since October 7. When national media contacted the Beaverton School District, where one of the student-athletes is a student, the district immediately asked the Cruz campaign to immediately withdraw the announcement from all distribution platforms.

“The family, school, and school district have never consented to the use of this photo,” the district wrote to the Cruz campaign. “Furthermore, the ad suggests that at least one of the athletes in this image is transgender. Please know that both of these players were born female.”

The image used in the Cruz ads was taken from: History of the Central Oregon Daily News regarding the participation of a transgender student in the April meeting. The Daily News did not respond to a request for comment regarding permission to use his image.

According to a district representative, the Cruz campaign has not yet responded to the Beaverton School District’s request.

The Cruz campaign did not respond to questions from The Oregonian/OregonLive about whether it has permission to use the image or whether it plans to stop producing or modifying the ad, nor did it respond to a question about whether the ad falsely suggests that the student or students shown are trans. In a brief statement, Cruz’s spokesman explained that “the photo shows an athlete who spoke out against boys playing girls’ sports after participating in a track and field competition in which a biological male defeated female athletes, which had an impact on individual and team medal results.”

That athlete is a former Summit High School student who spoke out against including a transgender athlete in the April competition in a Central Oregon Daily News article. In an interview with The Oregonian/OregonLive Friday, the student-athlete, who is currently homeschooled, said that although she and her family had not been asked for permission in advance, she had no objection to her image being used in the Cruz ad.

“I support what he talks about and what he represents,” she said.

But she said she thought the ad could be misconstrued to suggest that she or another student-athlete is transgender.

Cruz, who won election to the Senate in 2012 and is in a tight race with Allred to keep his seat, has consistently opposed trans and gay rights.

In 2021, it was a co-sponsor of, among others: Bill it would ban transgender women and girls from participating in sports programs that receive federal funding. Last year, he introduced a bill that would prohibit the use of federal funds to enforce laws against federal employees regarding the use of people’s preferred names and pronouns.

During a debate this month, Cruz sharply criticized Allred for supporting the organization Equality Acta bill prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sex, sexual orientation and gender identity in public places, education and employment. The senator also repeatedly criticized the 2015 U.S. Supreme Court case Obergefell v. Hodges, which required all states to recognize same-sex marriage.

— Aviva Bechky covers politics and education for The Oregonian/OregonLive. They can be reached at [email protected] or on X at @avivabechky.

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