transgender

Judge Blocks University of California’s ‘Misgendering’ Speech Policy

A California judge ruled against University of California’s policy of punishing students who “misgender” or “deadname” individuals who identify as “transgender.” 

Defending Education challenged UC’s “Sexual Violence and Sexual Harassment Policy” and “Anti-Discrimination Policy” in June 2026, arguing that the policies forced students to use language that promotes “transgender” ideology and threatened students “who dare to disagree with the prevailing campus orthodoxy.” 

District Judge Fred W. Slaughter issued a preliminary injunction on behalf of Defending Education and its members, barring UC schools from enforcing the rules against them. Defending Education had sought a broader injunction against the use of the policy, but the judge gave a narrow ruling.  

The Sexual Violence Policy prohibits “intentional and repeated use of a name or pronoun inconsistent with the individual’s gender identity (i.e., misgendering).”

The policy states that a “hostile environment” is created when, for example, “a transgender man is intentionally and repeatedly called by his dead name (i.e., refers to a name that a transgender person was given at birth but that they no longer use).” 

In other words, the policy prohibits students from calling transgender-identified individuals by names and pronouns consistent with their correct biological sex.

This is not just an abstract policy that threatens students who don’t believe transgender ideology. 

Students at all 10 UC schools must undergo yearly “Sexual Harassment, Anti-Discrimination, Prevention and Education” training. The training emphasizes that students create a “hostile environment” when they don’t want to share a restroom with someone of the opposite sex or when they fail to acknowledge another’s “gender identity.” 

Defending Education is a nonprofit grassroots organization that works “to restore free speech and the free exchange of ideas across K-12 and higher education while keeping political ideology and activism out of our schools.” The organization fights indoctrination in the classroom and promotes “the reestablishment of a quality, non-political education for all students.”

Its members, like “Student A” in the lawsuit, believe “that people are either male or female.” Her faith keeps her from affirming false “preferred pronouns” or “chosen names.” 

According to the complaint, she has no animosity “towards people who identify as transgender or nonbinary,” but:

In fact, she thinks that affirming someone’s non-biological “gender identity” is harmful to that person because it encourages him to believe a falsehood about himself and discourages him from seeking proper care to address his gender dysphoria.

“Student C,” also listed in the lawsuit, likewise believes that “people are either male or female.” While he wants to speak up in class when these issues are raised or speak out publicly about men in women’s private spaces, he “self-censors” because he could “be punished for violating UC’s policies.” 

UC policies violate the First Amendment rights of like-minded students who cannot affirm transgender lies. Such compelled speech is unconstitutional. 

Defending Ed President Nicole Neily applauded Judge Slaughter’s decision and said the organization will continue to battle for students’ First Amendment rights: 

We are gratified by today’s district court decision enjoining the University of California system’s coercive speech policy against our members. It is unconstitutional for public universities to compel student speech, and we will continue to defend this principle in California and other schools across the country as needed.

We wish them success as the case, Defending Education v. Maria Anguiano, makes its way through the courts. 

Related articles and resources: 

Court Rules Against Social Worker for Promoting ‘Binary View of Gender’

Free Speech Victory for Virginia Teacher Fired Over ‘Transgender’ Pronoun Policy

Missouri Governor Signs Bill Protecting Constitutional Freedoms on Campuses

Oregon School District Pays $650,000 for Firing Teachers Opposed to ‘Trans’ Policy

Teacher Wins $650,000 After Being Fired for Refusing to Use ‘Trans’ Pronouns

Teacher Wrongly Fired for Refusing to Use ‘Preferred Pronouns’ Wins $575,000

Transgender Resources

DOJ Announces Two More Hospitals Will Shut Down ‘Transgender’ Children’s Clinics

The U.S. Department of Justice announced that New York University Langone Hospitals (NYU) and University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) will no longer provide harmful medical interventions to minors who reject their biological sex. 

“Transgender” activists and their allies are decrying these closures. The Human Rights Campaign, the largest LGBT activist group in the U.S., recently issued an “Alert!” saying, “Access to medically necessary healthcare for transgender people is under threat across the country, especially for transgender youth.” 

In reality, federal agencies are working to protect children from destructive transgender medical procedures.   

The DOJ said it had come to agreements with “two of the nation’s largest health care systems … that resolve investigations into potential violations of federal law arising from their provision of sex-rejecting procedures on children, often euphemistically referred to as ‘gender-affirming care.’”

The agency added: 

Under the agreements, NYU and UPMC will cease providing these dangerous interventions to minors, which include administering puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones and performing surgical procedures. Each hospital will also pay a monetary amount as part of the resolutions, with NYU agreeing to pay $8.5 million and UPMC $950,000.

Attorney General Todd Blanche said: 

Today’s resolutions send a clear message: hospitals that target children in these practices and then fraudulently obtain payment for the procedures will be held to account.

In mentioning fraud, Blanche was referring to the recent report from the Department of Health and Human Services “Wolves in White Coats: How Doctors and Hospitals Pushed and Profited from the Fraud of “Gender Medicine,” which alleged that hospitals and healthcare workers often used fraudulent billing to obtain puberty blockers for minors with sexual identity confusion. 

Some insurance companies and many state Medicaid programs will not pay for puberty blockers for mental health issues when they are correctly billed as “gender identity disorder of childhood” or “other gender identity disorders.” 

In order to obtain these dangerous drugs for children, some doctors and hospitals falsely use the coding for real physical disorders like “endocrine disorder, unspecified” or “precocious puberty.” 

HHS and the DOJ have been investigating these dishonest practices. Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. commented on Wolves in White Coats: 

Doctors and hospitals must put children’s health ahead of ideology and financial gain.

This report identifies troubling billing practices that demand scrutiny. HHS will follow the evidence, protect taxpayers, and hold accountable anyone who broke the law or violated the trust of patients and families. 

The DOJ press release explained that this is not the first such agreement with major providers of damaging treatments for sex-rejecting minors: 

Today’s announcement follows similar agreements with Mount Sinai Health System in New York, Texas Children’s Hospital, the Cleveland Clinic Foundation, and Connecticut Children’s Hospital.

LGBT activist groups have vociferously opposed HHS and the DOJ investigating and shutting down gender clinics that permanently disfigure, mutilate and sterilize children. 

Shortly after Mount Sinai came to an agreement with the DOJ to permanently close its children’s clinic, 250 transgender activists and their allies showed up to protest. 

Mother Jones reported on Angelica Jadunandan, who had moved to New York so her eight-year-old son could get harmful gender medical procedures. 

Jadunandan is raising him as a girl. 

The magazine informed its readers:  

“My daughter told me she was trans when she was three years old,” Jadunadan told a group of protesters outside Mount Sinai on September 8th. “It wasn’t ‘I think.’ It was ‘I know.’” 

So the family moved a thousand miles from home, hoping for safety. “But I know better than most that this fight follows you, wherever you go,” Jadunadan said. 

That’s right. A three-year-old “told” his mother he was “trans.” 

Without the clinic’s closing, the young boy would have been in line for powerful body-damaging puberty blockers, opposite-sex hormones and surgeries. 

The Daily Citizen is grateful that the DOJ and HHS are stopping this lunacy. As Brett Shuate, assistant attorney general for the Civil Division stated: 

We appreciate that some of the nation’s largest and most prestigious hospital systems have agreed to cease harming minors under the guise of ‘gender-affirming care’ and agreed to pay for potential violations of federal law when they did so. 

But I want to be clear: our efforts and investigations into other providers are ongoing. Those that have broken the law and not resolved their potential liability will be prosecuted to the fullest extent possible.

Related articles and resources: 

Another Hospital Settles with DOJ, Agrees to Stop Performing Sex-Rejecting Procedures on Minors

DOJ Announces Cleveland ‘Gender Clinic Will Now Offer Help to Detransitioners

Focus on the Family Counseling Consultation and Referrals

Helping Children with Gender Identity Confusion

HHS Ceases Medicaid, CHIP Funding for Sex-Rejecting Procedures for Kids

HHS Will Block Hospitals From Performing Sex-Rejecting, Mutilating Procedures on Children

Hospitals and Doctors “Transition” Hundreds of Children with Drugs, Hormones and Surgery

INVESTIGATION: Taxpayers Fund Transgender Experiments on Children

New Video Equips Parents and Counselors to Help ‘Gender Dysphoric’ Children

President Trump Signs Order Protecting Children From Transgender Medical Interventions

Texas Children’s Hospital Settles with Feds for Performing Sex-Rejecting Procedures on Minors

Transgender Resources

Transgenderism and Minors: What Does the Research Really Show?

Massachusetts Family Fights for Custody of ‘Trans’ Daughter

A Massachusetts family is fighting for custody of their daughter after she was removed from their home because they would not affirm her claim that she’s a boy.

Joseph and Arlene Kutzko allege that their daughter, Sophie, was first groomed and “transitioned” into believing she was a boy by her high school. Their Catholic faith would not allow them to agree with false “transgender” ideology, so the Massachusetts Department of Children and Families (DCF) removed the then-15-year-old girl from their home.

The Kutzkos, along with Vernadette Broyles, president and chief counsel of Child & Parental Rights Campaign, explained the story to Fox News Religion Correspondent Lauren Green on her podcast Lighthouse Faith. 

Joseph Kutzko explained that their daughter was secretly “transitioned” after she was exposed to LGBT teaching through the Northborough-Southborough Regional School District. He said the topics conflicted with their “Catholic beliefs about human dignity [and] creation as male and female.”

In November of 2024, the Kutzkos noticed behavior changes in their 15-year old daughter, as she became more withdrawn. Up until that time, Sophie had been deeply involved with her family in their local church.

Algonquin Regional High School had placed her in counseling sessions – without the Kutzko’s knowledge or consent. The school lied and told them she “was staying after school for extra math help.”

Broyles explained the school was doing what schools across the country have done – secretly transitioning Sophie. She added, “Sophie had started to reject her sex, like so many thousands of girls across the country.” The school used a male name and pronouns to refer to her, affirming her rejection of her natural sex.

Broyles stated that the school reported the family to DCF because “they knew this Catholic family would not affirm the falsehood that their daughter was a boy.” 

Joseph said that they’ve had no contact with their daughter since January of 2025, and Broyles added the court put the no-contact decision “entirely in the hands of this minor child.”

The family is fighting in court to be able to contact Sophie, to bring her back home, and to stop the court from giving her testosterone.

Broyles said there were also initial allegations of physical abuse and neglect against Joseph, but these charges were untrue and unsupported, so the cases have been dropped.

Massachusetts DCF – along with many schools, transgender activists, politicians, state legislatures, and other child protective services agencies – call it “abuse” for parents not to affirm a child’s sexual identity confusion.

This is not an isolated event, despite what trans activists and their allies maintain, saying, “That never happens.”

It does happen, and has been happening for years now. Across the country.

Schools have been inculcating children into transgender ideology, teaching that they might really be the opposite sex – or another pseudo-gender altogether. This indoctrination often begins with impressionable young children in pre-kindergarten, continuing through 12th grade.

Schools then help these confused, sexualized children to “socially and medically transition,” as the Daily Citizen has repeatedly reported.

Broyles told Green that Child & Parental Rights Campaign has been contacted by parents in many different states who are in similar situations, as her organization works with parents who seek to protect their parental rights and their relationships with their children.

Most of these families suffer in silence, she added, because courts may hold them in contempt for discussing their case. She said that Massachusetts courts have protected parents’ free speech rights, which is why the Kutzkos are speaking out.

Green highlighted the importance of this issues, saying:

It is the spiritual battle of our cultural times, as people of faith war with various school districts, government services, government agencies over their parental rights.

If you’ve not paid a lot of attention to this, for whatever reason, … this is of utmost importance, because children have been removed from their homes, legally, when a child rejects their biological sex.

In the name of transgenderism, state legislatures, schools and child protective services are destroying parent-child relationships, attacking parental rights, and violating free speech and religious freedom.

This is, indeed, a spiritual battle; the Kutskos and other Christian parents are warring against the darkness of transgender ideology. Let’s pray for them to continue to have strength, to prevail and to have restored relationships with their children.

Listen to Lauren Green’s interview with the Kutzkos and Vernadette Broyles at Lighthouse Faith.

Related articles and resources:

Activist Erin Friday on Protecting Kids and Fighting ‘Gender’ Ideology

‘Art Club’ Documentary—One Family’s Escape from Gender Ideology, and the Bigger Trend Sweeping the Nation

Barrett v. Kagan: Key Takeaways From Supreme Court Ruling on ‘Transgender’ School Policies

Colorado Bill Would Force Parents to Accept Child’s New ‘Gender Identity’

Erin Friday on Family Courts, ‘Transgender’ Sanctuary States and Fighting to Protect Parental Rights

Exclusive Interview: Colorado Parents Expose ‘Gender Cult’ at Public School in New Documentary

HHS Tells States Not to Remove Children From Parents Who Affirm Biological Reality

Indiana Family Loses Custody of Son Over Religious Beliefs; Supreme Court Won’t Hear Case

Protect Your Kids from ‘Trans’ Activism — Look for These Red Flags

Radical Colorado ‘Transgender’ Bill Threatens Parents’ Rights and Free Speech

Supreme Court Affirms Parents’ Rights Over California’s ‘Transgender’ School Policies

Transgenderism Trumping Parents’ Rights

VIDEO: Parenting Through Gender Confusion, Public Schools Trumping Parents’ Rights

VIDEO: Parenting Through Gender Confusion, Public Schools

Doctors Sue Colorado for Forcing Them to ‘Transition’ Patients

Christian doctors and health care professionals filed a federal lawsuit challenging a Colorado law requiring  them to participate in “transitioning” sexually-confused children and adults.

The complaint was filed by Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) on behalf of the Christian Medical & Dental Associations, the Button Family Practice and several health care professionals who “believe that a person’s biological sex is a gift from God that cannot be changed or chosen.”

Although they’ll offer puberty blockers, opposite-sex hormones and surgeries for genuine necessary medical care, they won’t prescribe or perform these for clients with mental health issues, like those who reject their sex and believe they can somehow be transformed into the opposite sex.

ADF explained in a press release that state court decisions threaten these Christian health care professionals’ conscience rights:

The Colorado Supreme Court and another Colorado state court recently interpreted the state’s anti-discrimination law to force medical providers who prescribe hormones and or perform procedures for other conditions to also provide gender-transition drugs and surgeries for children and adults or risk prosecution. 

The legal aid organization added that the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act (CADA) doesn’t even allow medical providers to explain “their reasons for declining to provide gender-transition procedures on their websites or to the public.”

ADF Senior Counsel Bryan Neihart said of the lawsuit:

Colorado is once again at war with common sense, sound science, and religious freedom.
Forcing doctors to perform dangerous, unproven gender-transition procedures against their medical judgment, their oath to do no harm, and their faith is unconstitutional. The state is not allowed to conscript doctors to harm the very children and adults entrusted to their care. The First Amendment trumps Colorado’s mandate to embrace the lie of gender ideology.”

The Colorado General Assembly amended CADA in 2008 adding “transgender status” to public accommodations protections – including hospitals and healthcare facilities. The legislation was amended again in 2021, through the “Gender Identity Expression Anti-Discrimination Act,” replacing “transgender status” with “gender identity” and “gender expression.”

But in 2025, President Donald Trump signed an executive order “Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation, stating:

It is the policy of the United States that it will not fund, sponsor, promote, assist, or support the so-called “transition” of a child from one sex to another, and it will rigorously enforce all laws that prohibit or limit these destructive and life-altering procedures.

To fulfill that mandate, the Department of Health and Human Services blocked Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program funding for puberty blockers, opposite-sex hormones and sex-rejecting surgeries for minors.

HHS also began investigating hospitals for harming children through medical “transgender” interventions, and its recent report “Wolves in White Coats” accused Colorado Children’s Hospital (Colorado Children’s) of falsely billing insurance companies for puberty blockers prescribed for children, listing a different condition besides “gender-identity diagnosis.” 

Following the investigation and the loss of federal funding, the TRUE Center for Gender Diversity at Children’s Hospital Colorado stopped offering these ineffective, harmful medical interventions to children.

But the hospital and healthcare workers continued to offer puberty blockers, hormones and surgeries when needed for serious, legitimate physical conditions. For example, doctors use puberty blockers to treat endometriosis or advanced prostate cancer.

Four transgender-identified minors sued Colorado Children’s, arguing it was discriminatory to offer these treatments to “cisgender adolescent patients” (i.e., an ideologically loaded term referring to those who identify with their natal sex) but not to sexually confused minors. They sought to force doctors and the hospital to treat them and other minors, or be charged with violating CADA.

A lower court agreed, blocking the hospital’s decision to shut down its clinic, and a 5-2 majority of the Colorado Supreme Court ruled in favor of that injunction, ordering hospitals to renew medical procedures for children who reject their sex.

Colorado Children’s says it is complying with the court’s decision, but its doctors have refused to offer transgender medical interventions, to minors. They are now in the midst of a contempt of court hearing.

Colorado’s anti-discrimination law and its Supreme Court are putting Christian and all biology-based doctors at risk. They must violate their religious beliefs and medical judgement, or risk being charged through Colorado’s anti-discrimination law.

Let’s pray they prevail in their lawsuit.

The case is Christian Medical & Dental Associations v. Sullivan.

Related articles and resources:

HHS Ceases Medicaid, CHIP Funding for Sex-Rejecting Procedures for Kids

HHS Will Block Hospitals From Performing Sex-Rejecting, Mutilating Procedures on Children

18 States Sue HHS for Protecting Children From Sex-Rejecting Procedures

21 States Sue HHS to Continue Harming ‘Transgender’-Identified Minors

HHS Finalizes Report Finding Sex-Rejecting Procedures Harm Minors

HHS Releases Report on Harms of ‘Transgender’ Medical interventions for Minors

President Trump Signs Order Protecting Children From Transgender Medical Interventions

21 States Sue HHS to Continue Harming ‘Transgender’-Identified Minors

The Department of Health and Human Services announced in August it would no longer allow federal funds to pay for children to receive damaging “transgender” medical procedures, including puberty blockers, opposite-sex hormones and surgeries. 

Now, a coalition of 21 states and the District of Columbia have filed a lawsuit against the Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) challenging the ban. 

The states want courts to overturn the ban, so medical professionals can continue to harm children with body-mutilating, damaging interventions. 

CMS’ new rule prohibits Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) from funding any “sex-rejecting” medical procedures, including puberty blockers, opposite-sex hormones and surgeries. 

The agency said the prohibition was “an administration priority consistent with its commitment to protect children from experimental and life-altering sex-rejecting procedures that carry serious long-term health risks and lack sufficiently reliable evidence of clinical benefit.” 

The complaint argues that HHS and CMS do not have the authority to make these determinations about state Medicaid and CHIP programs: 

Congress has vested the states with the authority to determine which services would be covered under their Medicaid and CHIP programs when made pursuant to individualized determinations of medical necessity. 

Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell and California Attorney General Rob Bonta co-led the lawsuit and filed the challenge in the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts. 

Campbell denounced the HHS and CMS effort to protect children: 

The Trump Administration’s latest attack on access to gender-affirming care for young people unlawfully undermines states’ authority to regulate healthcare and tries to strip healthcare access from vulnerable kids. 

Bonta falsely called mutilating and sterilizing medical interventions for sexually confused children “crucial care,” adding: 

We will continue to fight to secure access to medically necessary care and protect transgender individuals’ abilities to prosper as their authentic selves. 

But “transgender” procedures that harm minors are not “healthcare,” nor are they “crucial” or “medically necessary.” Instead, they stop the normal process of puberty and damage healthy bodies, as CMS stated when the rule was released: 

Sex-rejecting procedures on children, which include puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgical operations, can result in irreversible damage, including infertility, impaired sexual function, diminished bone density, altered brain development, and other lasting physiological effects.

And calling someone’s “gender identity” their “authentic self” is a false ideology, with no scientific or medical basis. 

Children who reject their sex and want to identify as the opposite sex need help and healing for their mental disorder, not “gender-affirming care.” 

HHS released a comprehensive review in May 2025, Treatment for Pediatric Gender Dysphoria Review of Evidence and Best Practices. The 409-page report cited “growing international concern about pediatric medical transition.” 

The medical review noted that “the diagnosis of gender dysphoria is based entirely on subjective self-reports and behavioral observations, without any objective physical, imaging, or laboratory markers,” adding that “systematic reviews of the evidence have revealed deep uncertainty about the purported benefits of these interventions.” 

The lawsuit argues that the report’s conclusion “was predetermined by President Trump and HHS itself,” claiming that it “suffers from serious methodological problems.” 

Three of the report’s critics – the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Psychiatric Association and the Endocrine Society – were invited to review it, but only the APA deigned to do so. 

HHS thoroughly refuted the APA’s criticisms, and even The Washington Post editorial board supported the conclusion, saying:

[The HHS report’s] core finding – that the evidence for [transgender medical] interventions is highly uncertain – echoes the results of systematic reviews in other countries. None of the peer reviews of the HHS report ultimately rebut that conclusion.

The complaint joins more than 1,750 lawsuits attempting to stymie Trump administration policies, including at least six that target “transgender” policies that protect children from harmful drugs, hormones and surgeries. 

Twenty-seven states have “Help Not Harm” laws protecting minors from these body-mutilating procedures, while the issue is on the November 2026 ballot in Colorado and Missouri. 

Campbell and Bonta were joined in the complaint by attorneys general of Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, and Wisconsin, along with the governor of Pennsylvania.

The case is Massachusetts, et al. v. HHS. 

Related articles and resources: 

18 States Sue HHS for Protecting Children From Sex-Rejecting Procedures

HHS Ceases Medicaid, CHIP Funding for Sex-Rejecting Procedures for Kids

HHS Finalizes Report Finding Sex-Rejecting Procedures Harm Minors

HHS Releases Report on Harms of ‘Transgender’ Medical Interventions for Minors

HHS Will Block Hospitals From Performing Sex-Rejecting, Mutilating Procedures on Children

President Trump Signs Order Protecting Children From Transgender Medical Interventions

Sixteen States Sue Trump Administration for Protecting Children from ‘Trans’ Procedures

Transgender Resources