Months ago, California passed SB 107, a state law that has an outsized impact on the country as a whole. This bill, which went into effect on January 1st, makes California into a “sanctuary state” for children pursuing “transition” surgeries.
Laws from other states that ban these dangerous surgeries on children will now be ignored by California’s medical industry. While this was possible before the law went into effect, it required the parents to both be involved in the decision. Under this new law, if divorced parents share custody, California law allows a single parent living in California to ignore their custody agreement and proceed with the gender transition of the child against the wishes of the other parent.
Sadly, we have already seen the story of Jeff Younger in the news, a Texas father who has been on the forefront of the fight to protect his child from mutilation. Since 2019, Younger has been involved in a custody battle, due to his unwillingness to support the “transition” of his child.
Now, with this law in place in California, Mr. Younger’s custody agreements with his ex-wife may be ignored by California’s courts.
To quote our friends from the Alliance Defending Freedom:
SB 107 violates fundamental parental rights protected by the U.S. Constitution by empowering California courts to strip parents of custody if a person takes the parents’ child to California and arranges for the child to receive gender transition procedures. California law generally prohibits “unjustifiable conduct” to get jurisdiction in a California court for custody determinations. But Section 7 of SB 107 creates a broad carve-out, explicitly stating that “taking of a child” away from the child’s parents is not unjustifiable conduct if done to pursue gender transition procedures in California.
This gives a relative who secretly takes a child to California and arranges for gender identity procedures on the child a pathway to also strip the parents of their rights and obtain sole custody of the child. It also means that an unfit parent who would otherwise lose custody over a child in a custody dispute could take the child to California, seek gender transition procedures for the child, and use a California court to win custody.
In other words, this law incentivizes bad parents and ill-meaning relatives to flee with a child to California and push gender transition procedures on the child as a means of obtaining custody.
The law also grants California courts emergency jurisdiction to take a child away from both of his or her parents to seek “transition” services.
Olympia must act to pass legislation that protects the rights of Washington’s parents, or Mr. Younger’s story will only be the first in a long line of tragedies.
California’s blatant overreach on this issue may also be a matter for federal intervention. The Republican majority in the House should be working right now to find a solution that will prevent California from essentially kidnapping children from other states for the purpose of radical and dangerous hormone treatments and mutilation surgery.
Contact your state and federal legislators and tell them you want ACTION to protect Washington’s children.