A California ballot initiative seeking to undo the state’s robust rights for children switching genders signals a “sea change” in transgender healthcare policies that could be hitting states across the country. 

Momentum is gaining for the group Protect Kids California as it petitions for three ballot initiatives — a ban on minors receiving “gender-affirming” medical care, like puberty-blockers; a ban on biological boys competing in girls’ competitive sports and using their locker rooms and bathrooms; as well as a requirement that schools notify parents if their child is going by a different name and gender.

If successful by November 2024, the proposed legislation could spark change in other blue states. 

The petition comes as state legislators look to protect children from pro-trans policies that have increasingly become the new normal. Critics on both sides of the political aisle say that political motives and electoral interests have led to the forced sterilization of minors. Indeed, according to a new Definitive Healthcare report, gender dysphoria diagnoses rose in nearly every U.S. state between 2018 and 2022.

“A sea change” in legislation around child transgender policy is what an attorney and executive board member on the petition, Erin Friday, foresees. “More Democrat lawmakers,” she tells the Sun, as a Democrat herself, “are willing to meet with me and have conversations about this.”

Republicans in Ohio’s house voted last week to override the governor’s veto of legislation prohibiting minors from receiving “gender-affirming care” and transgender athletes from playing on girls’ and women’s K-12 and college sports teams. The Ohio senate is expected to vote the same way next week. Similar legislation is quickly accelerating in South Carolina’s house, and nationally, state lawmakers have filed more than 150 bills to restrict medical treatment for minors wanting to transition. 

In California, a chasm appears to be growing between lawmakers and voters on the issue of so-called gender-affirming care. In November, California’s attorney general, Rob Bonta, characterized Protect Kids California’s initiative as “Restricts Rights of Transgender Youth.” The group announced early this month that it would sue Mr. Bonta for allegedly mischaracterizing its motives.

“Transphobic,” “bigoted,” and “MAGA supports” are some of the other descriptions given to the petitioners. “Legislators like Senator Scott Wiener and Attorney General Rob Bonta would rather call us names than engage in real policy discussions,” an executive board member of Protect Kids California, Jay Reed, tells the Sun. He says the legislators have refused to consider the ballot initiative in committee hearings out of fear of upsetting activists. 

“The state legislature is completely out of touch with California,” Mr. Reed says, “so we have to take this issue directly to the voters.”

Of personal import for Ms. Friday is the petition’s School Transparency and Partnership Act. When her daughter came out as transgender at age 13, her school changed her name and pronouns without notifying Ms. Friday and refused to call her daughter by her legal name despite Ms. Friday’s request. Yet the daughter never medically transitioned, and a year later, she returned to being comfortable in her female body.

“This movement is so hateful, which is ironic since they call us hateful,” Ms. Friday says. “What could be more hateful than telling a child that everything is wrong with them?” She points to public school kindergarten curriculum featuring books in which doctors “guess” a baby’s sex.

“They’re sterilizing children,” she says. “They’re cutting an enormous part of their life out that they can never get back and they don’t comprehend it.”

What Ms. Friday calls “the ultimate conversion therapy” has proliferated due to significant financial incentives for the so-called converters. The number of gender clinics treating children in the United States has grown to more than 100 from zero in the past 15 years.

“They’re cash cows,” Ms. Friday says. “Detransitioners,” who often undergo hormone therapy or surgeries to reverse a gender transition, “are tethered to the medical industrial complex for life.”

Growing numbers of Americans, though, are pushing back. Typically viewed as right wing, the issue is increasingly bipartisan — or, as Mr. Reed says, “common sense.” The parents supporting the initiative tend to vote Democrat, support gay marriage, and are not very religious, Ms. Friday says, describing them as “gender-critical” and “biological realists.” 

Some 84 percent of California voters would support a law requiring schools to notify parents about any significant change in a child’s physical, mental, or emotional health or academic performance, according to a June survey by a polling company, Rasmussen Reports. About 69 percent of Americans say transgender athletes should only be allowed to compete on sports teams that conform with their birth gender, and 68 percent oppose access to puberty-blocking medication for transgender children ages 10-14.

Protect Kids California needs half a million signatures by late April of this year in order to get on the ballot next November. Although it’s up against a powerful and well-funded LGBTQ caucus in California, Mr. Reed says he is optimistic about the public support for the project.

“Momentum is building,” he says. “Placing these initiatives on the ballot will forever change the course of California.”

Also, it potentially will change the course of transgender legislation across the country: California passed a bill last year to provide “gender-affirming care” to out-of-state children seeking to transition. Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, Vermont, and Washington then declared themselves sanctuary states as well. California’s policies tend to migrate to other blue states, so it’s not all that unlikely that the opposite trend could take place.