‘Raising your son as a boy is not child abuse': Federal legislation targets gender ideology in CPS

Congressional Republicans have a plan for states that seize children from their homes and won't return runaways based on their parents' refusal to treat them as the opposite sex or provide them medicalized gender transitions: withhold their federal funding and strip their ability to serve as sanctuary states for so-called gender-affirming care for kids.

The Yaeli Martinez Child Protection Act, sponsored by Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., and Rep. Mary Miller, R-Ill., would use the power of the purse to change how child-welfare systems treat gender confusion, as well as prevent state courts from ignoring other states' custody orders when a child is taken out of state for what the legislation calls "sex-rejecting procedures."

California and Texas were locked in such a custody standoff several years ago, with the Texas Supreme Court costing Jeff Younger his gender-confused son by wrongly concluding California courts would enforce Texas orders to his ex-wife not to medically transition the boy. Worcester, Mass. also voted to become a transgender sanctuary city last year.

The legislation has ideologically varied support from more than 30 groups, according to Schmitt's list. 

They include Democrats for an Informed Approach to Gender, LGB Courage Coalition and Women's Liberation Front on the left, and America First Policy Institute, Concerned Women for America and Heritage Action on the right, plus many state-specific groups.

The Heritage Foundation, whose spun-off publication The Daily Signal first obtained Schmitt's legislation, published a report on the gender-ideological capture of child protective services the week before the bill's introduction and called for the same remedies as the bill.

"For more than a decade, activists backed by federal funding have trained caseworkers, doctors, therapists, and judges to treat a parent’s refusal to 'affirm' a gender-confused child as abuse or neglect," the report said. It urged states to follow the lead of Indiana, New Hampshire, North Carolina and Texas by excluding sex acceptance from child abuse.

"Raising your son as a boy or your daughter as a girl is not child abuse," Schmitt wrote Friday on X. "No way in hell should Washington fund bureaucrats who rip kids from their parents for refusing to bow to gender ideology."

The legislation is named after a teenager who committed suicide after interventions by her school, allegedly prompted by a settlement with the Obama administration and the California Department of Children and Family Services, which treated her mother as abusive for refusing to treat her as a boy. It warned the girl might commit suicide if not affirmed as "Andrew."

Enticed by California's offer to pay for her so-called gender-affirming care, Yaeli ran away, got placed in foster care and was prescribed cross-sex hormones without treating her other mental health problems, as her mother begged authorities to do.

Abigail Martinez has shared her daughter's story with sympathetic audiences and indifferent state lawmakers for several years. She supported state bans on medicalized gender transitions for minors in a brief for the Supreme Court, which upheld them, and her story appeared in another SCOTUS brief against California's now-blocked "gender secrecy" policies.

'Sex-rejecting interventions' include preferred pronouns, breast binders, coed sleeping

The 118-page legislation, much of which is written in dense legalese, blocks states from using federal funding to "construe raising, referring to, or caring for a child according to his or her sex as abuse or neglect," amending the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act, according to Schmitt's summary. 

It stops federally funded systems from "removing children from fit parents, initiating dependency proceedings, restricting visitation or communication, issuing abuse or neglect findings, placing parents on child-abuse registries, terminating parental rights, or denying foster or adoptive placement simply because a parent affirms the child’s sex," the summary says.

For children in state care, the summary says the bill restricts federal funds for sex-rejecting procedures – the gender-critical rendering of gender-affirming care – and requires children be placed in "sex-separated or single-occupancy housing" with privacy protections.

If the loss of federal funding wasn't enough to compel states, the legislation gives "parents, guardians, caregivers, and children" a private right to seek judicial remedies against entities that violate the legislation, the summary says.

The last 10 pages of the legislation aim to override what the findings call state laws or policies "arrogating custody to themselves if a child runs to or is taken by an adult to the State for sex-rejecting interventions in gross disregard of lawful custody orders and parental rights in another State," by amending the Parental Kidnapping Prevention Act.

Its definition of "sex-rejecting intervention" encompasses medical, cosmetic and social interventions: preferred pronouns, puberty blockers, hormones, surgery, breast binders, genital tucking and prosthetics to conceal sex or "simulate" the opposite sex. 

For kids 4 and older, it also includes using "sleeping quarters" and any "areas in which a child may be in a state of undress" with the opposite sex, and participating in "sex-separated activities" with the opposite sex.

 'Convincing the general public it's happening' is major hurdle

The highest-profile standoff now between child welfare authorities and parents over gender identity may be in Massachusetts, echoing the events leading to Yaeli Martinez's death and to the sex trafficking of Sage Blair, a detransitioner honored by President Trump.

Joseph and Arlene Kutzko accuse the Massachusetts Department of Children and Families of seizing their daughter Sophie at age 15, facilitating her gender transition and placing her in a "state-run boy’s dormitory." Her school first reported the Kutzkos to the state after socially transitioning the girl secretly, they claim.

Democratic Gov. Maura Healey claimed DCF removed the girl because her father was arrested and charged with punching her and pulling her hair, not for failure to affirm. He denied the charges, which are set to be dropped in December if Joseph Kutzko completes anger management and avoids contact with the girl, who turns 18 next year.

The family is represented by the Child and Parental Rights Campaign, which is listed on Schmitt's supporter list, said it helped draft the legislation and is soliciting donations for the Kutzkos' case.

A spokesperson told Just the News it went public with their case when the state sought to give Sophie "high-dose" testosterone, portraying it as "ordinary" care. A judge temporarily blocked the state, and the issue will come up again at the next hearing Oct. 29.

"There is a strategy to delay custody hearings to give the providers time to make the transition happen," an anonymous user on X wrote, saying their lengthy challenge to a "soft termination" ruling against their parental rights took so long that their state supreme court couldn't grant relief. "We live in times where sterilization is the goal of this type of procedure."

"Ending the ideological weaponization of child protective services is one of our most important fights," Our Duty USA, another supporter, wrote on X before the bill was introduced. "Convincing the general public that it's happening, when they can't imagine such a thing, is a big part of the battle."