A 14-year-old eighth-grade student in Arizona was forcibly removed from boys’ basketball tryouts because school district officials refuse to recognize him as a boy due to an error on his original birth certificate.
Laker Jackson attends Eastmark High School, a grades 7-12 campus in Mesa, Arizona, and had spent a year training to make the basketball team. But district officials refused to treat the cisgender teen as a boy because the gender marker on his original birth certificate, used during enrollment, lists his sex as female.
The mix-up dates back 14 years, when hospital staff mistakenly listed Laker as female on his birth certificate. His parents, who have six children, say they never noticed the error until enrolling him at Eastmark last year.
“I gave [a school administrator] the birth certificate, and they’re like, ‘Did you know this says female?'” recalled Becky Jackson, Laker’s mother, in an interview with Phoenix-based ABC affiliate KNXV. “I was like, ‘What? Oh man, that’s so funny.’ So we come home, everyone’s laughing.”
The Jacksons didn’t think the mistake would cause problems for their son, and correcting it wasn’t a top priority. They simply put the birth certificate in a drawer and moved on.
But that lack of urgency has now created problems for Laker at school. Last spring, staff began treating Laker as female, removing him from an all-boys gym class and requiring him to use a separate restroom, despite his parents’ insistence that he’s a cisgender boy.
Over the summer, the Jacksons moved to correct Laker’s birth certificate — a process that proved complicated, requiring an affidavit and a notarized letter from a physician confirming his gender. In cases involving a name change — which Laker has not requested — applicants must also obtain a court order.
“It’s not something you can fix quickly,” Becky Jackson told KNXV.
The family eventually submitted the corrected birth certificate to district officials, along with a doctor’s note and exam results verifying that Laker is biologically male. But administrators said it wasn’t enough, citing a rule that defines a student’s sex solely by the gender marker on their original birth certificate. That policy also determines athletic eligibility, limiting students to teams matching their assigned sex at birth as listed on the original birth certificate.
The conflict came to a head when Laker, after more than a year of training, was publicly escorted out of this year’s boys’ basketball tryouts.
“They sent the athletic director of Eastmark High to physically remove Laker from the basketball tryouts in front of all of his friends, in front of the coach,” Becky Jackson said.
Laker has faced ridicule and gossip since the incident, noting that friends on the basketball team told him “they were talking about it for the entire tryout and even the next day’s tryouts because they were really confused.” He adds that kids now make jokes about him because of the error on his birth certificate.
“I’ve gotten pulled into the principal’s office, and I’m really confused, because he’s like, ‘I want you to be comfortable.’ But I am comfortable, if you just put me with the boys and stuff,” Laker said.
Adding insult to injury, the district is now pressuring the Jacksons to pay out of pocket for chromosomal testing to “prove” Laker is male — without guaranteeing they’ll accept the results or treat their son according to his gender identity.
“[T]hey may consider changing it if we get chromosomal testing,” Becky Jackson told AZ Family, describing the district’s vague response. “They didn’t say they would. It says they may.”
The family says chromosomal testing could cost as much as $1,500.
“So who’s going to pay that?” Becky Jackson said.
In a statement to AZ Family, the Queen Creek Unified School District defended its policy, saying it is “committed to ensuring fairness, integrity, and equal opportunity in all athletic programs for both boys and girls.”
“In this particular case, the student has been enrolled in QCUSD since elementary school and has been registered as a biological female throughout their time in our district. The day before basketball tryouts, the parent submitted a new birth certificate and a doctor’s note indicating a gender change. Our schools rely on a student’s original birth certificate at birth to determine athletic eligibility.
“This student’s parent reached out to our district and asked for help finding a solution. We informed the parent that documentation such as a chromosome analysis could be considered to help support or verify eligibility in accordance with policy.”
According to KNXV, there have been no prior incidents in which a school has required a family to subject their child to genetic testing to determine their eligibility to compete in junior high school-level sports.
The Jacksons say they will have Laker try out for the girls’ team if the district leaves them no other option — a decision they blame squarely on administrators.
“I feel like it’s setting a precedent for both people who are pro-trans and people who maybe have an issue with it, because in the end, the precedent they’re setting is it doesn’t matter what paperwork or information you show us or give us, we are going to force a biological boy to play with the girls,” Becky Jackson, who has advocated for transgender children, told KNXV.
Indeed, the district’s stubborn insistence on a letter-of-the-law approach to birth certificates — seemingly driven by a desire to prevent transgender athletes from competing on teams that don’t match their assigned sex at birth — is what’s keeping the situation from being resolved.
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