The Oregon School District is calling on Ted Cruz to remove an anti-trans ad featuring Oregon high school athletes

Two anti-trans ads from U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz featured a photo of two Oregon high school athletes without permission from the minors’ families, prompting a school district to ask Thursday to remove the ads.

The videos are part of Cruz’s multimillion-dollar campaign to retain his Senate seat representing Texas despite a challenge from Democrat Colin Allred. Both ads satirize Allred’s support for trans women’s right to access women’s spaces. The ads state that Allred has voted for “boys in girls sports” and briefly show an image of two female student athletes — neither of whom are transgender — at a track meet in Oregon.

The Oregon students and their families only learned of the ads through reporting The hill Thursday, although one ad has been 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 promptly asked the Cruz campaign to immediately remove the ad from all distribution platforms.

“Neither the family nor the school or school district ever authorized the use of this photo,” the district wrote to Cruz’s campaign. “Additionally, the ad implies that at least one of the athletes in this photo is transgender. Please know that both athletes were born female.”

The photo used in Cruz’s ads is from a Central Oregon Daily News story about the participation of a transgender student in the April meeting. The Daily News did not respond to a request for comment on whether it would allow use of his image.

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

The Cruz campaign did not respond to questions from The Oregonian/OregonLive about whether it had permission to use the image or planned to discontinue or modify the ad, or whether the ad wrongly implies that a student or students shown are trans. In a brief statement, a spokesperson for Cruz explained that “the photo shows a female athlete who spoke out against boys playing in girls’ sports after participating in a track and field competition where a biological male defeated female athletes and influenced individual and team medal results.”

That athlete is a former Summit High School student who spoke out in the Central Oregon Daily News piece against a transgender athlete’s participation in April’s competition. In an interview with The Oregonian/OregonLive Friday, the student-athlete, who is now homeschooled, said that although she and her family were not asked for permission in advance, she does not mind her image being used in Cruz’s ad.

“I support what he is talking about and what he stands for,” she said.

However, she did say she felt the ad could be misconstrued as implying that she or the other student-athlete is trans.

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

In 2021 he co-sponsored a account that would have excluded transgender women and girls from athletic programs that receive federal funds. And last year, he introduced a bill that would ban the use of federal funds to enforce rules for federal employees about the use of people’s preferred names and pronouns.

In a debate this month, Cruz excoriated Allred for his support of the Equality Acta bill that would have banned discrimination on the grounds of sex, sexual orientation and gender identity in public places, education and the labor market. The senator has also repeatedly criticized Obergefell v. Hodges, the 2015 U.S. Supreme Court case that 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 press X to @avivabechky.

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