In a press release, the U.S. Department of Education announced an investigation into the California Department of Education for potential violations of the Family Educational Rights Privacy Act (FERPA). Specifically, the press release argues that by enforcing a California law “prohibit[ing] school personnel from disclosing a child’s ‘gender identity’ to that child’s parent,” the California DOE has “abdicated the responsibilities FERPA imposes.” In a statement, Secretary of Education Linda McMahon declared that “It is not only immoral but also potentially in contradiction with federal law for California schools to hide crucial information about a student’s wellbeing from parents and guardians. The agency launched today’s investigation to vigorously protect parents’ rights and ensure that students do not fall victim to a radical transgender ideology that often leads to family alienation and irreversible medical interventions.”
A federal judge has blocked the enforcement of a Biden-era foster care regulation in Texas that required foster placements for LGBTQ youth to affirm a child's self-expressed “gender identity.” In September of 2024, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) over the rule, arguing that HHS overstepped its authority by requiring state foster systems to embrace “gender ideology” as a condition to receive federal funds. The federal court agreed with Paxton’s legal assessment. “This is a tremendous victory for Texas families, parental rights, and the rule of law. The Biden Administration had no authority to force radical gender ideology onto vulnerable children and demand compliance from foster care providers under threat of lost funding,” said Paxton in a press release. In May, I co-wrote a piece with Leor Sapir in City Journal detailing problems with the foster care regulation.
A panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld an Idaho law requiring that public school bathrooms be designated by sex, and that students use facilities in accordance with their sex rather than their “gender identity.” U.S. Circuit Judge Morgan Christen wrote that “We acknowledge, as the district court did, that the use of restrooms, locker rooms, shower rooms, and overnight accommodations do not present uniform risks of bodily exposure…However, to have won its equal protection claim, the student organization needed to have shown the bills' mandated sex segregation of each of those facilities was unconstitutional.” Courthouse News Service adds that “The court determined that the statute indeed identified an important governmental objective, protecting the privacy and safety of all students, particularly in areas where a student might be partially or fully undressed.”
Alaska’s State Medical Board has come out against sex-trait modification procedures for minors, declaring that it “opposes hormonal and surgical treatments for gender dysphoria in minors due to insufficient evidence of long-term benefits and risks of irreversible harm.” The board also called on Alaska’s legislature to introduce legislation prohibiting minors from accessing these procedures. No bill has been proposed by lawmakers this year, although a bill was introduced last year but failed to advance. In a letter sent to the legislature, the medical board also stated that it supported “psychological support and counseling as safer alternatives” to medicalization.
The Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine (SEGM) has written a detailed analysis of new German clinical practice guidelines for the treatment of adolescent gender dysphoria. Notably, the final adopted guidelines are “consensus-based” rather than “evidence-based” because they are not based on systematic reviews, the overall quality of evidence was not evaluated, and treatment recommendations were not assigned strength values based on the quality of evidence informing them. Despite some welcome changes in the final guidelines that stress the need for additional caution when treating youth, the guidelines ultimately promote “affirming care.” Earlier iterations drew criticism from a group of Chairs of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry in Germany, and indirectly from the German Medical Assembly, who proposed a resolution urging the German government to restrict access to puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to clinical trials. Among the main issues SEGM highlights is that despite conceding that “most young people with gender-related concerns likely have temporary ‘gender non-contentedness’ and should not undergo gender transition,” the guidelines provide no pragmatic way to distinguish between these patients and those who might theoretically benefit from medical transition. Moreover, the guidelines continue to create a path for “any sufficiently determined adolescent to access hormones and surgery” based on nothing but patient autonomy.
In a new expose, the Daily Wire lays bare the web of connections between the managing leadership of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) and dozens of other medical organizations. Tax documents reviewed by the watchdog organization, the American Accountability Foundation, revealed that Veritas Association Management runs the day-to-day operations of dozens of medical organizations, including the controversial WPATH, raising questions about reputation laundering and the role played by Veritas in mainstreaming WPATH’s influence and practices within the larger medical landscape. Indeed, many of the organizations linked to Veritas have formally endorsed “affirming care” despite the low-certainty evidence for benefits. “By managing these organizations alongside WPATH, Veritas risks mainstreaming and normalizing WPATH’s radical policies within the broader medical community” the American Accountability Foundation told the Daily Wire.
Jesse Singal makes the case in the New York Times that the field of pediatric gender medicine should be reformed through better research, not abolished. Though he acknowledges the methodological limitations of many of the studies that find positive findings for “affirming care,” Singal argues that it would be a mistake for the federal government to defund this research entirely. Instead, Signal suggests the field should be reformed, and that the NIH should wield its influence to hold researchers to higher standards. While there are compelling philosophical arguments that subjecting minors to experimental practices is ethically untenable, Singal reasons that since affirming care remains legal in nearly half the country, “people should have access to good data about their effects.” Singal advocates for enforcing data sharing rules at the NIH to make it easier to both evaluate and debunk federally funded research. He also suggests the NIH can refuse to fund researchers studying gender medicine who engage in “methodological tomfoolery.”
Last Thursday, the Wisconsin Assembly approved four bills with implications for trans-identified youth and young adults. Building on Trump’s executive orders, two of the bills reserve participation in K-12 and college girls’ and women's sports to female athletes. Despite pushback from Democrats, these sports bills are broadly popular, with a Gallup poll showing that 69% of surveyed Americans believe sports participation should be based on one’s sex, not “gender identity.” A third bill establishes parameters for school board social transition policies, requiring parental permission, and in some cases, a principal’s authorization. A fourth bill prohibits minors from undergoing medical transition as a treatment for gender dysphoria. Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers is expected to veto the bills in question.
Joseph Figliolia
Policy Analyst
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