Potential statewide ballot measure could block gender-affirming care for transgender students 

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The checkup started like any other. The doctor came in, followed by a premed understudy, and they began.

As Dr. Denise Taylor chatted with the understudy, the patient—a transgender student from San Luis Obispo High School who hardly spoke during these visits—interrupted the doctor and turned to the understudy.

"You better listen to Dr. Taylor," the patient said. "She saved my life."

That comment hasn't left Taylor's mind since she heard it. The HIV treatment and adult/youth hormone, gender-affirming care specialist has been helping transgender and LGBTQ-plus community members on the Central Coast for years.

"I've been doing what I do for over 20 years," Taylor said. "Sometimes you encounter something that sticks out to you."

But anti-trans groups across the state are threatening to cut off the medical care that Taylor provides to some of her patients by gathering signatures to put an initiative on the November ballot.

The Protect Kids of California Act 2024 would require schools to notify parents if their child expressed mental health issues related to gender identification, bar trans students from participating in sports that do not align with their biological gender, and block access to gender-related medical procedures for minors even with parental consent. A group supporting and funding pro-parents' rights school board candidates in Northern California, the Students First California Committee, is funding the initiative's circulation efforts.

Assemblymember Bill Essayli (R-Riverside), parents-rights group Moms for Liberty, and anti-trans activists Chloe Cole and Chris Elston (aka Billboard Chris), who spoke at Cal Poly in December, have endorsed the initiative.

San Luis Obispo's Moms for Liberty chapter currently endorses multiple school board members—Kenney Enney and Laurene McCoy in Paso Robles, Jennifer Grinager in Templeton (who co-founded the local chapter), and Denise McGrew Kane and Rebekah Koznek in Atascadero. Koznek is the only one who's openly supported the petition on Facebook.

To qualify for the general election ballot, the initiative needs signatures from 546,651 registered voters by May. SLO Moms for Liberty is encouraging its members and supporters to print out the initiative and gather signatures at school board meetings, public gatherings, and anywhere else they can get people to sign.

"In my eyes, the initiative is an effort to stop state-sanctioned child abuse," said Arroyo Grande-based Moms for Liberty member Gaea Powell, referring to gender-affirming health care processes like puberty blockers and surgeries for developing kids. "How can a minor give consent to something as impactful as something that will block the process of their puberty and growth?"

Powell said the initiative is a matter of keeping those who identify as their biological gender equal to those who did not.

"This is all stuff other parents have told me as I don't have a child in the classrooms—I don't have a horse in this race," she said. "I believe the powers that be and our state leaders have lost their moral compass, and an initiative like this will right that."

Her stance on the matter was not rooted in homophobia or bigotry, she said, but rather in undoing indoctrination.

"Those abiding by this idea that you can be or have a trans child are indoctrinated and are destroying our society," she said. "This is not about [people over 18] who identify as transgender—it's about why we are allowing this to happen to kids."

Health care providers like Taylor take issue with the push to block kids' access to transgender care.

"Where do these people think transgender adults came from?" Taylor said with a dry laugh. "Why is it the second they turn 18, it's all of a sudden different? Why is it when someone named Joe wants to go by Ben it's no issue, but the second Joe wants to go by Josephine, it matters?"

She said that most of her patients just want to be able to use the restroom, play a sport, or exist as their preferred gender.

"Just like all the other kids, they have bodies, they need to use the restroom, they need a place to relax, they need to stay active—the list goes on, all of those things are critical to that transitioning process," Taylor said.

LGBTQ-plus student advocate and founder of the Central Coast Coalition for Inclusive Schools Douglas Huemann said he's concerned that the initiative is attempting to undo the rights given to students under California law.

Assembly Bill 1266, signed in 2014 by then-Gov. Jerry Brown, allows transgender students to fully participate in activities, facilities, and programs based on their preferred gender identity.

"That bill went into effect and affirmed trans students then and it still does now," Heumann said. "Kids are not all of a sudden now deciding they want to identify as a different gender."

The law was opposed by anti-trans groups, which filed for a veto referendum against the bill in 2014. Huemann is concerned that the Protect Kids of California Act is just another effort to undo the rights granted in 2014.

"They believe that trans kids genuinely should not exist and that by getting these signatures and getting this on the ballot they can effectively erase them," he said. "The importance of being able to exist and get care is important for these kids. ... If you don't believe me, believe their parents who have seen their kids blossom because of the treatment they were able to get."

According to Taylor, the initiative's motives are also anti-science as hormone therapy, gender surgery, and transgender health care have a medical standard they're held to just like any other medical practice.

"There is an official world organization—known as the World Professional Association for Transgender Health—that has existed in some form since the 20th century that researches and updates a standard for care just like any other form of health care," she said.

Those standards were last updated in 2023 and include an outline of recommendations for treatment of the issues faced by transgender kids, how to inform both the kids and parents about that process, and how to start the process.

"With this standard of care, there is a pathway to treatment that accounts for everyone and aims to inform everyone involved in that process," Taylor said.

Those constantly updated medical standards, Taylor said, give kids who may be trans the opportunity to get the help they need faster and more safely.

"When they start later—because that is what happens sometimes—I've had patients who come in distraught that the impacts of puberty already happened," she said. "This idea that they can dress and act as the gender they identify as but live in this fear of the second they talk or someone notices something from that incorrect puberty that they will have it pointed out."

Taylor said she understands that sometimes complications that can arise from certain treatments, especially if they are started without all parties being fully aware of the physical impacts. One bad case doesn't invalidate the entire field. Moreover, Taylor said the solution isn't to eliminate the option of treatment from those it might save.

"All instances of the use of things like puberty blockers—which this initiative targets—are always undertaken after it has been established in line with health standards that the child is transgender and has been properly informed of the process," Taylor said. "To deny this to a child who knows what they are will cause suffering in the long term." Δ

Reach Staff Writer Adrian Vincent Rosas at [email protected].