The effort also comes as the administration continues to crack down on gender-affirming care

Shauneen Miranda
Washington State Standard

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s administration demanded Tuesday that dozens of states remove from sex education materials any references to a person’s gender departing from their sex assigned at birth, or lose federal funding.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Administration for Children and Families warned in letters to 40 states, the District of Columbia and several territories that they could lose a total of $81.3 million in remaining federal funds for the Personal Responsibility Education Program, or PREP, if they do not get rid of these references within 60 days. 

The policy appears to target any reference to transgender or nonbinary people. For example, in a letter to an adolescent health program specialist at Alaska’s Department of Health and Social Services, the federal agency asked that a definition of transgender and related terms be deleted from school curricula.

In a statement shared with States Newsroom, Laurel Powell, a spokesperson for the Human Rights Campaign, an LGBTQ+ advocacy organization, said the move was part of Trump’s “all-out fight to erase government recognition of transgender people.”

“Sexual education programs, at their best, are age-appropriate, fact-based and informative at a time when young people need this information to keep themselves healthy,” Powell said. “When they do not acknowledge the existence of trans people they fail in their goal to inform, and cutting this funding denies young people the information they need to make safe, healthy, and informed decisions about their own bodies.” 

PREP focuses on preventing teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections, and targets youth who are experiencing homelessness or in foster care, or reside in rural areas or places with high rates of teen birth, according to the agency. 

The states that HHS sent letters to Tuesday are: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin and Wyoming. 

Latest demand

The demand marks the latest effort from the administration to do away with “gender ideology,” which the administration says includes “the idea that there is a vast spectrum of genders that are disconnected from one’s sex.” 

GLAAD, an LGBTQ+ advocacy group, noted in a fact sheet that “gender ideology” is “an inaccurate term deployed by opponents to undermine and dehumanize transgender and nonbinary people.”

The letters came less than a week after the administration terminated California’s PREP grant after refusing to remove “radical gender ideology” from the education materials. 

Failure to comply with this demand, the agency said, could result in the “withholding, suspension, or termination of federal PREP funding.” 

“Accountability is coming,” Andrew Gradison, acting assistant secretary at HHS’ Administration for Children and Families, said in a statement. 

Gradison added that the administration “will ensure that PREP reflects the intent of Congress, not the priorities of the left.”

The effort also comes as the administration continues to crack down on gender-affirming care.

Trump signed earlier executive orders that: restrict access to gender-affirming care for kids; make it the “policy of the United States to recognize two sexes, male and female;” bar openly transgender service members from the U.S. military; and ban trans women from competing on women’s sports teams. 

This report was first published by the Washington State Standard.