US states sue RFK Jr over trans-inclusive sex education row

Robert F Kennedy Jr is coming under fire from a number of US states for threatening to cut funding over sex-education programmes that mention trans and non-binary people.

The legal complaint against the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) accused the health secretary – who has no medical degree but has said he can diagnose some childhood illnesses just by looking at a youngster – of forcing states to “rewrite sexual-health curricula to erase entire categories of students”.

Led by Minnesota, Washington and Oregon, the complainants claimed that the Trump administration was violating federal law by overstepping congress’ spending authority.

In August, the government threatened to rescind federal funding for educational institutions in at least 46 of the 50 states if they did not remove sex-education materials that mention trans and non-binary people.

HHS could axe more $81.3 million (almost £60.5 million) in federal funding within the Personal Responsibility Education Program (PREP) and the Title V Sexual Risk Avoidance Education program (SRAE) if it follows through on the threat.

The federal funding initiatives, which are managed by the Kennedy’s Department of Health, aim to lower teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections among young people aged between 10 and 21, through the sex-education curriculum.

More than $12 million (£8.9 million) in PREP funds has already been withheld from California, after HHS said the state’s Department of Public Health was producing education materials containing “gender ideology”.

The lawsuit called the government’s stipulation a “radical departure” from how the programmes typically function and was another attempt by Republicans to “target and harm transgender and gender-diverse youth as well as youth with differences in sex development “, and went on to say: “For the past four decades, the federal government has recognised a significant public health need for adolescent sexual-health education.

“Suddenly forcing plaintiff states to remove medically supported, complete and culturally appropriate content in the materials for PREP and SRAE is contrary to the laws that congress adopted, and is arbitrary and capricious.”

Other states involved in the legal complaint are Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island and Wisconsin as well as the District of Columbia.

They want the conditions to be declared unlawful and the two programmes to be allowed to include mention of trans and non-binary people.

However, Andrew Gradison, the assistant secretary at the Administration for Children and Families, a division of the health department responsible for welfare, child support, adoption, foster care, childcare and child abuse programmes, has said: “Federal funds will not be used to poison the minds of the next generation or advance dangerous ideological agendas.”

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