HHS Cancels $12 Million in Sex Ed Grants Over Gender Identity Inclusion
HHS says 46 states and territories are on notice they’ll lose funding unless gender identity is removed from sex education curricula.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has canceled a $12 million grant to California’s Personal Responsibility Education Program (PREP) — a federal initiative created under the Affordable Care Act to teach abstinence and contraception to at-risk youth.
The Trump administration balked at the program’s inclusion of transgender identity, reports Reuters, accusing educators of “indoctrinating” children with “gender ideology.”
In a letter to the California Department of Public Health, HHS said it was rescinding the grant because “the grant is not being administered consistent with the authorizing statute, as the funded programs and services include gender ideology which is outside the scope of the statute.”
The letter further alleged that California officials had refused an earlier request to strip gender identity-related material from the program.
HHS argued that “gender ideology” is “irrelevant to teaching abstinence and contraception and unrelated to any of the adult preparation subjects” that the grant is intended to cover, such as “adolescent development,” parent-child communication, healthy relationships, and “healthy life skills” — even though gender identity could directly affect those areas.
An HHS press release accused California of using taxpayer dollars to “encourage kids to contemplate mutilating their genitals.” Supporters of the curriculum counter that it simply asks teachers to note that not everyone feels their assigned sex at birth aligns with their gender expression or inner sense of self. Social and surgical transition are only briefly mentioned at the high school level to explain what “transgender” means.
Andrew Gradison, an acting assistant secretary at HHS, defended the cancellation on Fox & Friends, alleging that PREP’s curriculum included “radical gender ideology,” without offering specifics.
“If you continue to push radical ideology on our children, we will not pay for it,” Gradison said.
Gradison said his department is completing a review of every state’s sex education curriculum and warned that multiple states could be forced to strip references to transgender identity or risk losing federal funding. According to The Hill, 46 states, U.S. territories, and the District of Columbia have been told to remove “all references to gender ideology” from their PREP programs.
The grant’s cancellation comes on the heels of the Trump administration’s lawsuit against California for refusing to ban transgender athletes from female sports teams, arguing that such policies violate Title IX. Trump also signed an executive order threatening to cut funding from schools or districts that allow transgender athletes to compete in female sports.
For its part, California officials have refused to comply, pointing to a state law that allows transgender children to join teams matching their gender identity.
California law also requires sex education classes to address gender identity and gender expression — another reason officials resisted HHS’s demand to erase those topics from the PREP curriculum.
Most school funding comes from local and state sources, but federal funding has given Trump leverage to enforce an executive order that denies transgender identity by recognizing only two sexes, based on biology at birth. He threatened to withhold that funding in a Truth Social post last week, ahead of HHS’s revocation of the grant.
“Any California school district that doesn’t adhere to our Transgender policies, will not be funded,” Trump wrote, without further explanation. “Thank you for your attention to this matter!”
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