On August 28, 2025, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) delivered a seismic blow to California’s approach to sexual education. The department notified the state that it would be terminating $12.3 million in federal grants, funds that had been earmarked to support the California Personal Responsibility Education Program (PREP). The reason? California’s refusal to strip its curriculum of all content related to the existence and experiences of transgender students. The move, which has quickly drawn national attention, is being described by legal experts and advocates as not only illegal and unconstitutional, but also as part of a larger, coordinated campaign to erase transgender people from public life.
According to Bloomberg Law, the HHS’s decision is rooted in a demand that California censor any mention of transgender identity from its PREP curriculum. The federal PREP program was established by Congress to ensure that all states provide education on adolescent development, including healthy attitudes about growth, body image, and—crucially—support for sexual minorities such as transgender youth. The HHS itself, on its official website, has long stated that PREP aims to reach young people across the spectrum, specifically mentioning “sexual minorities” as a target audience. That should mean transgender students are squarely included in PREP’s mandate.
Yet the HHS, under the Trump administration, has taken a sharply different stance. In its letter to California, the department accused the state of “using taxpayer money to teach curricula that could encourage kids to contemplate mutilating their genitals.” The letter went further, branding any handling of gender identity issues as “egregious” and “delusional” forms of “gender ideology.” This rhetoric, echoing language often found in conservative political discourse, signals a deepening hostility toward transgender inclusion in public education.
But the stakes of this funding cut go far beyond budget lines. As Southwestern Law School professor Hila Keren writes in Bloomberg Law, the HHS’s action is “a piece of the fierce attacks from the Trump administration on the very existence of transgender people in public life.” This latest move is just one in a series of actions targeting transgender Americans. Past measures have included refusing to issue passports that reflect a trans person’s gender identity, halting funding for medical institutions that study or provide gender-affirming care, banning transgender service members from the military, excluding gender-affirming treatments from government employee health plans, and even demanding hospitals surrender confidential medical information about transgender minors.
Each of these steps, Keren argues, adds up to a project of “social erasure”—a systematic effort to deny the legitimacy of gender identities that differ from sex assigned at birth and to suppress any public recognition of transgender existence. The HHS’s letter to California, which repeatedly uses the term “gender ideology,” is a stark example of this effort, adopting language from the conservative movement that seeks to restrict gender to “the bodies that God gave [them] and that medicine has come to associate with ‘male’ and ‘female.’”
From a legal perspective, the HHS’s action is fraught with problems. The PREP grants in question are not discretionary gifts; they are federally mandated funds, ordered by law to support youth education on adolescent development—including topics directly relevant to transgender students. By cutting off these funds, the HHS is not only violating the letter of the law but, as Keren contends, also infringing on the Constitution. “Bluntly and intentionally discriminating against transgender people, infringing on their constitutional right to equal protection under the law, and doing so with impunity,” she writes, is a grave overreach by the executive branch.
The legal battle over transgender rights has increasingly found its way to the Supreme Court. In the months leading up to the HHS’s move against California, the conservative supermajority on the Court has sent a series of signals that embolden anti-trans policies. In US v. Shilling, the Court allowed the military ban on transgender service members to take effect while litigation continues. In US v. Skrmetti, it permitted red states to deny minors access to gender-affirmative care, using what critics call “contorted logic” and irregular procedures. And in Taylor v. Mahmoud, the Court allowed religious parents to remove their children from classrooms whenever LGBTQ characters appeared in storybooks.
Looking ahead, the Supreme Court is set to hear cases on the legitimacy of conversion therapy and the participation of transgender athletes in girls’ and women’s sports. These cases are widely seen as pivotal moments that could further shape the legal landscape for transgender rights in America.
The HHS’s recent letter to California also mirrors the Supreme Court’s reasoning in Skrmetti. There, Chief Justice John Roberts concluded that the case “carries with it the weight of fierce scientific and policy debates,” suggesting that scientific uncertainty justifies deference to states that ban gender-affirming care. The HHS, for its part, now asserts that “gender ideology is not supported by the weight of science,” despite a broad consensus among American medical professionals to the contrary. Critics argue that both the Court and the HHS are invoking science not as an objective guide, but as a cover for fundamentally political decisions that undermine trans rights.
There’s a sharp irony in how “science” is wielded in these debates. In Skrmetti, the Court claimed scientific uncertainty meant states should be free to restrict care. The HHS, meanwhile, uses the same supposed uncertainty to override California’s own democratic process, stifling blue states and imposing a religiously tinged version of sexual education at the federal level. This, observers say, is a glaring contradiction: conservatives are willing to bend science, legislation, and constitutional principles to outlaw ideas and people they find objectionable.
For California, the loss of $12.3 million is not just a financial setback—it’s a direct challenge to its inclusive approach to sexual education. For transgender students and their allies, the move is a chilling reminder that their rights and even their existence are up for debate at the highest levels of government. For the rest of the country, it’s a test of whether federal democracy can withstand what Keren calls “multi-branch constitutional opportunism”—a coordinated effort across the executive, legislative, and judicial branches to undermine the rights of sexual minorities and the authority of states that support them.
As the Supreme Court prepares to weigh in on even more contentious cases, and as the HHS continues to push its agenda, the future of transgender rights in America hangs in the balance. The latest round of funding cuts may seem like a budgetary squabble, but for many, it’s a warning sign that the battle over equality and recognition is far from over.
