By Moira Gleason, The Daily Signal | February 17, 2025
Californians are fighting back against radical transgender ideology in their schools and athletic associations. With the announcement of new legislation in the state Assembly on Friday to protect girls and women’s sports as well as parental rights, advocates say they want California to set a precedent for other liberal blue states.
The three bills would allow parents to opt their children out of instruction about transgender concepts in school, amend child abuse codes to exclude parental refusal to medically or socially transition their child, and return to sex-segregated athletics, restrooms, and changing rooms.
Assemblywoman Leticia Castillo, a Republican from the 58th Assembly District, representing parts of Riverside and San Bernardino counties, said she introduced the first two bills to restore parental rights and place safeguards around families in the state. Under current California law, parents can be investigated by social services for abuse and can lose custody of their children for failing to affirm their so-called gender identity.
“We must protect our children from harmful ideologies that are completely out of control and have already done unspeakable harm,” Castillo said at a press conference Friday outside the California state Capitol building in Sacramento. “It’s time for this abuse to end.”
The legislation comes in the wake of a federal investigation of the California Interscholastic Federation and of San Jose State University for Title IX violations, as well as three executive orders from President Donald Trump banning boys and men from girls and women’s sports; prohibiting federal funding of K-12 schools that promote radical gender ideology; and banning federal funding of sex-change surgeries for minors.
Among those who spoke in support of the new legislation at the press conference was Chloe Cole, a 20-year-old California resident and detransitioner who now advocates against gender ideology.
“An executive order is not enough,” Cole said. “We need laws, not only federally, but in our state.”
Erin Friday, a lawyer and California mother of a formerly trans-identified daughter, is spearheading the grassroots effort to enact this legislation and protect children from transgender ideology in school.
Friday said many of those advocating against transgender ideology at the state level aren’t necessarily Republican or conservative. They’re also regular Democrats who have had enough of the actions of their elected officials.
“I’ve been a Democrat since I was 18 years old, and I cannot get a single Democrat lawmaker to sit down and have a conversation with me on this issue,” Friday told The Daily Signal. “They’re not listening to constituents. They decided to make it a partisan issue.”
Greg Burt, vice president of the California Family Council, said he anticipates an uphill battle on all these measures, but they show the culture is shifting in California.
“There’s a lot of Democrats who are waking up to this, that it is one step too far to abandon the whole idea that there are things called male and female, and it’s determined by their biology,” Burt told The Daily Signal. “They’re now voting Republican, just on that issue alone.”
Meanwhile, Republicans in the state don’t prioritize parental rights because they cannot get support on the issue, he said. Democrats hold 3-to-1 supermajorities in both houses of the California Legislature.
“The fact that Trump came out so clear on those issues is, is a real big help,” Burt said. “Hopefully, it transforms the Republicans, so they start realizing these are winning issues.”
He urged the Trump administration to follow through on its executive orders and support the grassroots movement already in place.
“It can’t be an empty threat,” Burt said. “These activists and legislators really believe what they are doing is helping these kids, and they will hardly look at the opposite viewpoint.”
To win on this issue at a national level, he said, California must change first because every bill promoting transgender ideology originated in the state. Other blue states will follow the lead of California.
“You’re not getting rid of this until you go to the state who is influencing the rest of the nation,” Burt asserted. “Don’t just think you can fix it in other red states and ignore California, because California will not ignore the rest of the country.”
California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office did not respond to The Daily Signal’s request for comment.
Moira Gleason is a Daily Signal journalism intern.
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