The U.S Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) on Thursday terminated a sex education grant to California due to the state’s refusal to remove radical gender ideology from the taxpayer-funded program, the agency announced.
HHS, through its Administration for Children and Families (ACF), specifically terminated the state’s Personal Responsibility Education Program (PREP) grant, which is a program for students meant to prevent teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections. HHS said California used taxpayer money to “teach curricula that could encourage kids to contemplate mutilating their genitals, ‘altering their body … through hormone therapy,’ ‘adding or removing breast tissue,’ and ‘changing their name.’” HHS said the state also instructed teachers to “remind students that some men are born with female anatomy.”
“California’s refusal to comply with federal law and remove egregious gender ideology from federally funded sex-ed materials is unacceptable,” Acting Assistant Secretary Andrew Gradison said in a statement. “The Trump Administration will not allow taxpayer dollars to be used to indoctrinate children. Accountability is coming for every state that uses federal funds to teach children delusional gender ideology.”
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ACF asked California to submit its PREP curricula for review in March 2025 and found “concerning gender ideology that exceeded the program’s statutory purposes,” the agency said. In June 2025, ACF ordered the state to remove that content from the program within 60 days, and California ultimately responded to the agency refusing to do so, according to HHS.
On Thursday, Gradison sent a letter to Sydney Armendariz, the division chief of Maternal, Child, and Adolescent Health Division at the California Department of Public Health (CDPH), and Matthew Green, the deputy director of the Center for Family Health at CDPH, announcing that ACF is “terminating all California State Personal Responsibility Education Program (PREP) awards and suspending the funding effective August 21, 2025.”
Gradison told the state the decision to terminate is final unless California leaders file an appeal.
“This is the final decision of the Administration for Children and Families,” the letter reads. “It shall be the final decision of the Department unless, within 30 days after receiving this decision, you submit a notice of appeal to the Departmental Appeals Board (DAB).”
Among the materials ACF reviewed was a lesson for middle school-aged students that introduces them to transgenderism, Fox News Digital reported.
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“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 reportedly reads. “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.”
ACF also found program materials for teachers that included lessons on how to not misgender people, and claims that “all people have a gender identity,” according to the report.
“Previous grant funding shows California’s PREP program received just under $6 million from the federal government in fiscal year 2022. All in, California could lose $12.3 million in funding that it has not yet received, covering multiple years, according to HHS,” per the outlet.
Katherine Hamilton is a political reporter for Breitbart News. You can follow her on X @thekat_hamilton.
