Earlier this week, the U.S. Department of Education announced enforcement actions against Anne Arundel County Public Schools in Maryland and Ann Arbor Public Schools in Michigan for “social transition” policies which violate the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA). The Student Privacy Office (SPPO) is partnering with the DOJ to pursue disciplinary proceedings for Anne Arundel County Public School’s alleged failure to comply with FERPA requirements by classifying student information related to “gender identity” as “confidential medical information.” “Separately, SPPO has determined Michigan’s Ann Arbor Public Schools’ policy requiring school employees to hide a child’s ‘transgender status’ from his or her parents likely violates FERPA,” the DOE press release explains.
According to the medical watchdog organization, Do No Harm, Kaiser Permanente is pushing “gender radicalism” on teens via a controversial questionnaire designed for standard patient visits with young people aged 12-18. In the brief questionnaire obtained by Do No Harm, young people are asked about both their “gender identity” and sexuality. Controversially, while other lines of health questioning are designated as “non-confidential,” the questions about “gender identity” are flagged with a confidential designation. “Not for nothing have states begun enacting parental-notification laws addressing the social ‘transitioning’ of minors and opening up medical records to legal guardians. Parents have every right to know whether, when, and how their kids are being made to question the ‘alignment’ of their biological sex and ‘gender identity,’” Do No Harm explains.
As journalist and activist Erin Reed reports, several House Democrats broke with their party by voting in favor of two amendments to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) proposed by South Carolina’s Nancy Mace. One amendment prohibits TRICARE from funding medical transition procedures for servicemembers and their families, while the other amendment prohibits male athletes from playing on women’s sports teams in any K-12 schools run by the U.S. military. Both provisions have passed the U.S. House and been incorporated into the NDAA House Bill, however, neither amendment is law and attention now turns to the Senate and House-Senate reconciliation.
Journalist Ben Ryan released footage from a 2022 conference by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health which lays bare the degree to which the field came to prioritize a patient’s wants and wishes in determining treatment eligibility, at the expense of individualized assessment. “The collective also wants to reiterate our recommendation that the focus of assessment for medical interventions be more on embodiment goals than identity,” said psychologist Sean Moundas. Relatedly, WPATH leaders kept emphasizing the concept of “adultism bias” in youth gender medicine, which suggests that minors should be conceptualized as small adults with full cognitive maturity.
Oregon parents have filed a lawsuit against the state’s Department of Human Services, and their child’s therapist, after being found guilty of inflicting “mental injury” on their daughter for refusing to affirm her “gender identity.” According to the parents, the complaint against them was launched right after they terminated services with their daughter’s “affirming” therapist, which culminated in losing custody of their daughter. “On essentially the same facts later used to remove K.A., a neutral court had twice declined to find immediate danger, and ODHS had already once found the mental-injury allegation unfounded,” the lawsuit states. The complaint argues that the DHS violated their rights under the 1st and 14th amendments, respectively.
England’s National Health Service (NHS) has made collecting patient information on biological sex a new mandatory requirement as part of its Core Information Standard. Before version 2.01, the Core Information Standard included a “sex” field but did not mandate the recording of “birth sex” as a distinct data item. The April 2026 revision replaces that field and makes “sex at birth (observed)” mandatory for the first time. The inconsistent use of “sex,” “gender,” and “gender identity,” in patient records has made tracking a patient’s biological sex more difficult. As critics point out, however, sex is deeply tied to susceptibility to disease processes, and maintaining accurate records is essential for promoting patient health and safety.
The UK’s Supreme Court held hearings this week regarding a challenge to the legality of the UK’s planned clinical trial on puberty blockers as a treatment for gender dysphoria. While the UK prohibited blockers for use in routine treatment citing a lack of evidence for benefit, the ostensible logic of the trial is to accumulate more reliable evidence about the mental health impact of blockers. A central tension in the trial, however, is ethically justifying the use of blockers on a new cohort of patients when there is considerable evidence for harm, and only low certainty evidence for benefits. The legal challenge argues that UK regulators, like the MHRA and the Health Research Authority, acted unlawfully in approving the study. On Friday, the High Court rejected the legal challenge to the clinical trial, although an appeal is still possible.
Joseph Figliolia
Policy Analyst
News
