On Thursday, a Catholic legal group filed an emergency appeal asking the U.S. Supreme Court to block enforcement of a California law that prohibits school staff from notifying parents if their child adopts a cross-sex “gender identity” or requests to go by cross-sex pronouns. The law in question, signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2024, came in response to several school district policies in the state which required parental notification when students declared a cross-sex identity or asked to be addressed by new pronouns. Shortly before Christmas, however, U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez issued a permanent injunction blocking enforcement of California’s law. Since then, a three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals temporarily put Benitez’s order on hold, prompting the emergency appeal to the Supreme Court. “Parents only relinquish authority needed for the school to carry out its ‘educational mission’... they do not delegate the authority to make decisions regarding whether their child is a boy or a girl,” attorneys from the Thomas More Society wrote in the new appeal.
In its next legislative session, Alabama lawmakers will consider HB23, a bill that would expand an existing law that prohibits discussions on “gender identity” and sexual orientation in K-5 to all grade levels in the public school system. In addition, the bill would prohibit teachers from using pronouns at odds with a student’s sex, and from displaying flags associated with “gender identity” and sexual orientation. “The vast majority of Alabama’s teachers and educators have the common sense and decency to keep their personal political and social views out of the classroom, but for the small percentage that do not, the Legislature can pass laws forcing them to either behave or be gone…Our classrooms must focus on reading, writing, and arithmetic rather than promoting cross-dressing, gender fluidity, and alternative lifestyles” said one of the bill’s sponsors, Rep. Mack Butler. The Alabama legislative session begins on January 13th.
According to Utah’s House Speaker Mike Schultz, lawmakers in the state are moving to establish a permanent ban on medical transition for dysphoric minors. Since 2023 when the state passed SB16, surgical procedures for minors have been banned while new prescriptions for cross-sex hormones and puberty blockers have been put on hold while the state conducted its own review of the evidence. Interestingly, the move to prohibit sex-rejecting procedures is at odds with the findings of Utah’s review, which determined that there are positive health outcomes connected to medical transition. However, critics like Do No Harm and the Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine have taken the state’s report to task for failing to meet standards for a systematic review, including its failure to perform an evidence synthesis while frequently conflating evidence quantity and quality. The findings of Utah’s review also clash with the findings of other systematic reviews conducted by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Florida, the UK, Sweden, and Finland.
The Washington Post editorial board weighs in on a recent landmark ruling by federal judge Roger Benitez who sided with parents challenging California policies which prohibit teachers from sharing information about a child’s “gender identity” or “preferred pronouns” with parents. Significantly, the Cass report conceptualizes “social transition,” including the use of cross-sex pronouns, as an active psychosocial intervention for its potential to alter identity development. The state’s policies “are designed to create a zone of secrecy around a school student who expresses gender incongruity…Children as young as two years old are supposed to consent before teachers talk to their parents about gender issues. Parents have a right to receive gender information and teachers have a right to provide to parents accurate information about a child’s gender identity,” Benitez wrote in his 52-page ruling. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, however, has temporarily blocked enforcement of Benitez’s decision.
After HHS issued a declaration last month asserting that sex-rejecting procedures are inconsistent with medical standards, its general counsel has referred three children’s hospitals to the agency’s inspector general’s office. The hospitals include Seattle Children’s Hospital, Children’s Hospital Colorado, and Children’s Minnesota. Twenty-one states, plus D.C., have challenged the declaration. As part of the lawsuit, however, HHS has temporarily agreed to delay pursuing punitive action against the hospitals in question.
The Daily Signal reports that the White House has considered a potential executive order that would prohibit Child Protective Services from removing children from their parents’ custody based on disagreements over “gender identity,” by affirming parents’ rights to raise their children in accordance with their sex. In short, the order would eliminate regulations which discriminate against parents who affirm biological sex and prohibit the use of federal funds to separate sex-realist parents from their children. The order would also call on federal agencies to fund guidance and training which affirm biological sex. Notably, the Heritage foundation released a report last year which documents how parents in California, Indiana, Illinois, Virginia, Maryland, and Montana, have lost children to state systems that transition them or assign them to the custody of an “affirming” parent or guardian. “This is an issue that crosses party lines,” said Erin Friday, a parental rights advocate who met with the White House’s Domestic Policy Council to discuss the issue. “It doesn’t matter. Parents don’t care what jersey they’re wearing if their child is being stolen.”
A group of federal government employees have filed a complaint challenging a policy by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management that prohibits access to “gender affirming care” in federal health insurance programs. The policy was detailed in an August 2025 letter, however, it did not take effect until the start of 2026. The complaint argues that the policy discriminates on the basis of sex, an argument which was rejected by the Supreme Court in Skrmetti, a case involving the constitutionality of Tennessee's law restricting minors from accessing medical transition procedures.
21 states led by New York are suing the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services over a declaration asserting that pediatric medical transition is not consistent with professionally recognized standards of healthcare, citing its own comprehensive evidence review, and those of several European countries. The declaration argues that HHS has the authority to declare that a treatment modality is not safe or effective and consistent with medical standards. The states are arguing, however, that the declaration violates the Administrative Procedures Act and Medicare and Medicaid statutes. Kennedy’s declaration, however, seems more like a legal and intellectual justification for HHS’ recently announced proposed rules to curtail access to sex-rejecting procedures. Interestingly, while the states are arguing that Kennedy has no authority to impose medical standards on the states, Kennedy’s declaration subtly circumvents this by arguing that it's not regulating medicine because the practices themselves do not qualify as medicine based on their safety profile and clinical rationale.
Joseph Figliolia
Policy Analyst
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