Sen. Eric Schmitt introduces bill to protect parents who reject gender ideology in child welfare cases

Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., a Catholic, is introducing a bill that would stop child welfare agencies that receive federal funds from taking action against parents because they raise their child according to his or her sex. 

Under the Yaeli Martinez Child Protection Act, an agency could not use that parental decision as a factor in determining whether to investigate the family, remove the child from the parents’ custody, limit parental visits, or deny a foster or adoptive placement, according to the bill text shared with Zeale News. 

The bill would also bar those agencies from providing or helping children in their care to obtain “sex-rejecting interventions,” including puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries. 

Agencies that break the rules could lose federal funding or have to repay money they received. Parents, guardians, caregivers, and children could also sue in federal court, according to the bill’s text. If an agency’s records cite a parent’s decision to raise a child according to his or her sex as a concern, the agency would have to provide strong evidence that the decision played no part in its action.

The bill also seeks to prevent courts in one state from taking over a custody case from another state to allow a child to obtain the interventions the bill addresses. 

The measure is named for Yaeli Martinez, who died by suicide at 19, three years after the Los Angeles County Department of Child and Family Services took custody away from her mother. An explainer shared with Zeale News says authorities removed her from her mother’s care because her mother refused to treat her as a boy. Martinez received testosterone while in state care, according to the explainer. 

CatholicVote Director of Government Affairs Tom McClusky praised the measure in a statement to Zeale News, thanking the Republican lawmakers for introducing it.

“We’ve all heard the horror stories. A school talks a confused kid into thinking they’re the other sex, then the state shows up and yanks that child out of a Catholic home because Mom and Dad won’t play along with the lie,” he said. “That’s not protecting kids. That’s punishing parents for refusing to salute an ideology.”

Zeale News reported earlier this month that a Catholic couple in Massachusetts is fighting to regain custody of their 17-year-old daughter from the state. The parents say her public school began socially “transitioning” her without their knowledge and reported them to child welfare authorities after they refused, because of their faith, to refer to her as a boy. 

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McClusky added that the “Yaeli Martinez Act would put federal child-protection money back where it belongs: keeping children safe from real danger, not weaponizing the government against families who won’t go along.”

He said, “It’s about time.”