On September 30, U.S. Senator Eric Schmitt introduced the Yaeli Martinez Child Protection Act, a federal bill named after a trans-identified teenager who committed suicide. Last week, Representative Mary Miller introduced it in the House, too. Yaeli Martinez was separated from her mother, Abigail, by the California Department of Children and Family Services over a dispute about her “gender identity.” While Abigail believed that her daughter’s distress stemmed from untreated depression, Yaeli was instead placed in an “affirming” group home. A judge later ruled that she could receive testosterone against her mother’s wishes. Three years later, at 19, Yaeli was dead.
The Yaeli Martinez Child Protection Act is a direct response to the radical transformation of the child welfare system under the Biden administration, which spearheaded an ambitious effort to inject gender ideology into child-protective systems nationwide. This began with a controversial 2024 foster-care rule—modeled on a federally funded pilot program, “AFFIRM-ME”—which asserted that parents who do not affirm children’s “gender identity” threaten their safety and well-being. As this principle spread unchecked into trainings for social workers, lawyers, and judges, it undermined procedural fairness, parental rights, and the well-being of sex-distressed minors.
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Miller’s bill would protect parents from abuse allegations by asserting that raising a child in accordance with his or her sex does not constitute such abuse—and defund trainings that teach this position. It would also prevent the use of federal funds to medicalize dysphoric youth in the child-welfare system and amend the Parental Kidnapping Protection Act to prohibit states from taking custody of dysphoric minors for the purpose of medical transition. The bill would not weaken a state’s ability to intervene in genuine cases of abuse, but it would protect parents who oppose transition for scientific, ethical, or religious reasons.
As a recent Boston Globe article about the Kutzko family in Massachusetts makes clear, families are living with the consequences of these ideas operating unchallenged in the extended child-welfare system, and the Yaeli Martinez Act would help address this situation. Families in Oregon, California, Maryland, Virginia, and Indiana have had similarly distressing encounters with Child Protective Services (CPS).
The Biden administration’s foster rule was vacated by the courts and later rescinded, but the spirit of the rule lives on as de facto policy through activist-derived trainings that qualify as continuing-education requirements for lawyers and judges. While states such as California and Illinois formally mandate that family judges and state judges, respectively, take courses centered around LGBTQ cultural competency and best practices, DEI cultural competency requirements for continuing legal education in a dozen other states are less stringent.
LGBTQ psychoeducation teachings on the necessity of affirmation and the importance of “respectful” pronoun use are often smuggled into trainings as part of these broader requirements for cultural competency or “procedural fairness.” For example, a nonbinding bench guide for judges asserts that “affirming” a trans-identified person’s pronouns is already an existing obligation for judges under their judicial codes of ethics. These trainings for judges and family lawyers often impart contested ideas that actively threaten procedural fairness while presenting them as value-neutral and consistent with “respect” and “best practices.”
A New York Judicial Institute training for judges goes further, presenting attendees with a highly charged hypothetical involving a child-custody dispute over a trans-identified minor. In the scenario, the father is in favor of transition, but the mother, who has custody, is opposed. Instead of exploring the complexities of the situation, the training unambiguously presents non-affirmation as discrimination and a threat to the child’s mental health. It quickly becomes clear which parent is considered to be acting in the child’s best interest.
“What parent is in the best position to guide and provide . . . for the physical needs of the child?” the speaker asks attendees. “This involves medical decision making . . . Who is going to honor the child’s wishes. Who’s going to be respectful of the child’s statement, ‘I’ve known since I was four years old.’ Who is going to think that that deserves some honor and respect.”
The training also implies that any forensic evaluator who rejects the premise of the training is unfit to serve in that capacity in these disputes. These evaluators engage in fact-finding to make recommendations to judges about what is in the best interests of the child. Screening for evaluators in this way, however, further tips the scales toward affirmation by virtually ensuring that custody recommendations align with activist dogma.
In a 2022 California training for minor’s counsel, Asaf Orr, co-presenting in his role as head of the Transgender Youth Project, offers similar ideas. Orr is currently being sued in his capacity as a former legal advisor to the University of California San Francisco’s Child and Adolescent Gender Clinic after a California father, Ted Hudacko, accused him of facilitating his minor son’s medicalization without his consent in violation of a custody order.
It doesn’t take a lawyer or a judge to see that trans activists wield considerable power through trainings that often function like law, with few opportunities for challenge or redress. Passing the Yaeli Martinez Act would be a step in the right direction, though lasting change will require reforms to legal and judicial education. This includes creating new training efforts that educate lawyers and judges about the complexities of these issues, while championing true procedural fairness and parental rights.