The Trump administration has given California 60 days to remove all references to gender identity from its federally funded sex education program or risk losing federal funding. The Health and Human Services (HHS) Administration for Children and Families (ACF) reviewed the California PREP program’s materials and found content, such as lessons on transgenderism and non-binary identities, deemed incompatible with the program’s statutory purpose, which focuses on abstinence, contraception, and STI prevention.
The notice, released by the ACF, stated that the program’s materials included lessons introducing middle school students to the concept of transgenderism, stating that some individuals may identify as transgender or gender queer despite being assigned male or female at birth. The ACF also flagged high school materials that discussed social transitioning versus medical transitioning and defined ‘non-binary’ as a valid gender identity. Teacher training materials were also part of the flagged content, with statements such as ‘all people have a gender identity’ and definitions of terms like cisgender, non-binary, agender, bigender, genderfluid, and genderqueer.
According to the ACF, the authorizing statute for the California PREP program explicitly defines it as a program focused on educating young people about abstinence, contraception, and avoiding sexually transmitted infections like HIV/AIDS. The notice criticized the prior administration for allowing the use of federal funds to teach students about gender ideology, arguing that this approval exceeded the agency’s authority under the law. The ACF now requires California to revise its materials within 60 days, after which it must resubmit them for approval. Failure to comply could result in the withholding or termination of the program’s federal grant.
California’s Department of Public Health, which oversees the PREP program, has not yet issued a formal response to the notice. A spokesperson for Governor Gavin Newsom’s office stated that the materials in question are not the state’s K-12 sex education curriculum and that the PREP program provides comprehensive sexual health education to adolescents in specific settings such as homeless shelters and juvenile justice facilities. The state is now under pressure to revise its approach to meet the ACF’s requirements, but has not yet announced its response or plan for compliance.