‘Parents have the right to raise their children according to their sincerely held religious beliefs and moral convictions,’ a department official said.
The Department of Health and Human Services has warned states against removing children from their homes because of disputes over their gender identities.
The department’s Administration for Children and Families (ACF) division sent a letter on March 3 to every state, outlining that child welfare agencies must base decisions on removing children on evidence of abuse or imminent risk of harm, per the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act.
That means that children “may not be removed from their homes solely because parents decline to support a child’s self-identification as the opposite sex,” the administration stated.
The letter also said that removing children from their homes based solely on a parent’s religious beliefs or moral convictions may violate constitutional rights, such as the free exercise of religion.
“A state’s decision to break up a family cannot be based solely on a parent’s objection to radical gender ideology, or irreversible sex-rejecting medical interventions,” Alex Adams, the assistant secretary for family support and leader of the ACF, said in a video statement.
The letter was also aimed at encouraging states to adopt clearer definitions of abuse and neglect that “explicitly protect parents’ rights to raise children consistent with their biological sex,” he said.
The letter was prompted by reports that states removed children from homes after the children’s parents declined to acknowledge the minors’ decisions to identify as genders different from their biological sexes.
On social media, officials highlighted that President Donald Trump, during his State of the Union address on Feb. 24, said that a girl named Sage Blair, who at age 14 identified as transgender, was assisted by school authorities in Virginia in a gender transition.
The authorities hid the transition from Blair’s parents, the president said.
“Surely we can all agree: No state can be allowed to rip children from their parents’ arms and transition them to a new gender against the parents’ will,” the president said.
Sage and her mother, Michele Blair, attended the speech in Washington.
Sage and Michele Blair sued the Appomattox County School Board and school officials in 2023, seeking damages for intentional interference with a parental relationship. They claimed that Sage was later sex-trafficked, drugged, and raped.
The board has asked a federal court to dismiss the legal challenge, arguing that what happened is not attributable to board policy or the officials’ actions. The case is ongoing.
The ACF said it will “continue to monitor states’ compliance with federal child welfare requirements and take appropriate action to ensure federal funds are used consistent with the law.”
