The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has given the state of California a 60-day deadline to remove references to gender identity from its sex education curriculum or face the possible termination of federal funding.
The move follows a review by HHS’s Administration for Children and Families (ACF), which examined California’s Personal Responsibility Education Program (PREP) after requesting the curriculum materials in March. PREP is a federally funded program aimed at teaching youth about abstinence, contraception, and prevention of sexually transmitted infections.
According to a report by Fox News, ACF notified California’s PREP administrators on Friday that the curriculum includes lessons and language deemed outside the scope of the program’s “authorizing statute,” particularly references to “gender ideology.
“The Trump administration will not tolerate the use of federal funds for programs that indoctrinate our children,” said ACF acting Assistant Secretary Andrew Gradison. “The disturbing gender ideology content in California’s PREP materials is both unacceptable and well outside the program’s core purpose. ACF remains committed to radical transparency and providing accountability so that parents know what their children are being taught in schools.”
Among the reviewed materials was a middle school lesson introducing students to transgenderism. It included language explaining that some individuals identify as transgender or “gender queer,” stating, “This means that even if they were called a boy or a girl at birth and may have body parts that are typically associated with being a boy or a girl, on the inside, they feel differently.”
High school content also included lessons on “social transitioning,” “medical transitioning,” and identifying as “non-binary,” along with the claim that gender identity is “essentially a social status.”
ACF’s notice emphasized that the PREP statute focuses on sexual health education, including abstinence and STI prevention, and “neither requires, supports nor authorizes teaching students that gender identity is distinct from biological sex or that boys can identify as girls and vice versa,” ACF’s notice stated.
“We are aware that this curricula and other program materials were previously approved by ACF,” the notice stated. “However, the prior administration erred in allowing PREP grants to be used to teach students gender ideology because that approval exceeded the agency’s authority to administer the program consistent with the authorizing legislation as enacted by Congress.”
If California fails to revise the program within 60 days, ACF said it may withhold, suspend, or terminate the federal grant funding the initiative.
