The Trump administration is giving California's federally funded sex education program 60 days to remove all references to gender identity or face potential termination of its funding.
California's Personal Responsibility Education Program (PREP) grant has been under scrutiny by the Trump administration since at least March, when the HHS's Administration for Children and Families (ACF) requested the federally funded state-operated program send copies of its curriculum and other relevant course materials to them for review.
According to ACF, the probe was initiated to ensure the state's sexual education programming is medically accurate and age-appropriate.
The agency said in a Friday notice sent to California's PREP program, reviewed by Fox News Digital, that following its examination of the program's curriculum and other teaching materials, it found a litany of subjects and language within the course materials deemed to fall outside the program's "authorizing statute," in particular references to "gender ideology." As a result, ACF said it halted their review for "medical accuracy," since the content it found is not statutorily allowed in the first place.
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"The Trump administration will not tolerate the use of federal funds for programs that indoctrinate our children," said ACF's acting Assistant Secretary Andrew Gradison. "The disturbing gender ideology content in California's PREP materials is both unacceptable and well outside the program's core purpose. ACF remains committed to radical transparency and providing accountability so that parents know what their children are being taught in schools."
Among the materials ACF found, which it now wants to be removed, was a lesson for middle school-aged students that seeks to introduce them to the concepts of transgenderism.
"We've been talking during class about messages people get on how they should act as boys and girls-but as many of you know, there are also people who don't identify as boys or girls, but rather as transgender or gender queer," the lesson states to students. "This means that even if they were called a boy or a girl at birth and may have body parts that are typically associated with being a boy or a girl, on the inside, they feel differently."
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ACF flagged parts of the curriculum for high school-aged students as well, which gets into topics like differentiating between "social transitioning" and "medical transitioning." The high school-aged materials also include instruction on what it means to be "non-binary" and language that tells students "gender-identity" is "essentially a social status."
Teacher training materials part of the California PREP program were among other aspects of the California sex-ed curriculum that were flagged by ACF.
"All people have a gender identity," the teacher training materials state. They also instruct educators to refer to people who follow the biological marker they are "assigned at birth" as "cisgender" and adds that those who are not "cisgender" may identify as "non-binary, agender, bigender, genderfluid, [or] genderqueer."
In ACF's notice, the agency pointed out that under the authorizing statute that established California's PREP program, it is defined as a program designed to educate young people mainly on abstinence, contraception and avoiding sexually transmitted infections, like HIV/AIDS.
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"The statute neither requires, supports nor authorizes teaching students that gender identity is distinct from biological sex or that boys can identify as girls and vice versa," ACF's notice to California PREP states.
"We are aware that this curricula and other program materials were previously approved by ACF," the notice continues. "However, the prior administration erred in allowing PREP grants to be used to teach students gender ideology because that approval exceeded the agency's authority to administer the program consistent with the authorizing legislation as enacted by Congress."
California now has 60 days to remove all gender ideology references from its PREP curricula and other program materials, and then it must resend its materials for approval by ACF.
If California fails to make the necessary changes requested by the Trump administration, the agency says it has the authority to withhold, disallow, suspend or terminate the federal grant currently funding California's PREP program.
"We are reviewing the letter, which we were first made aware of via Fox News, not HHS," a spokesperson from California Governor Gavin Newsom's office said in a statement to Fox News Digital.
"To be clear: this is NOT California's K-12 sex education curriculum. The California Personal Responsibility Education Program (CA PREP), which receives barely $6 million in federal funding, provides comprehensive sexual health education to adolescents via effective, evidence-based program models - largely youth in homeless shelters and juvenile justice facilities."
California's Department of Public Health, which oversees and implements the California PREP program, did not provide a response to this article.
