A notorious CA state senator from San Francisco is taking aim at the custody rights of parents in other states who refuse to let their gender-confused kids medically transform their bodies to look like the opposite sex. If passed, Senator Scott Wiener’s bill, SB 107, would empower California courts to take “temporary emergency jurisdiction” of children if they come to California for trans-drugs, surgery, or mental healthcare. The bill calls these treatments “gender-affirming care.”
Courts would also be instructed to ignore the fact that a child has been kidnapped from the parent or parents with legal custody, if the minor comes to the state for gender transitioning.
Senator Scott Wiener introduced the bill to fight against what he called, “brutal attacks on transgender children” in states that have banned minors from receiving sterilizing puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and trans surgeries or from states that label these treatments as child abuse. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton put out a statement explaining why he thinks trans drugs and mastectomies on healthy minors violate Texas child abuse statutes. Other states like Alabama, North Carolina, and Oklahoma have passed or have introduced laws to ban trans-treatments, while some states are considering bans.
“This bill declares war on parents throughout the country who don’t want their children sterilized because of their gender dysphoria, a condition that resolves itself in most cases after a child reaches adulthood,” said Greg Burt, Director of Capitol Engagement with the California Family Council. “Senator Wiener thinks he is making the state a safe haven for kids, but if passed, he will turn California into a threat to every family in the country.”
Senator Wiener was challenged in the Assembly Public Safety Committee a few weeks ago by Assemblyman Kelly Seyarto regarding how SB 107 violates the Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction Enforcement Act, which obligates states to honor child custody judgments of other states. Wiener denied that his bill violates the Act and even claimed, “the bill does not involve rejecting judgments or child custody judgments.”
“SB 107 may be the most brazen assault on fundamental parental rights in the history of this state."
But how can he claim this when the Committee’s own analysis says the opposite, stating that the bill gives “California family courts” the authority to “make an initial child custody determination” or take “temporary emergency jurisdiction” of a child in the state “for the purpose of obtaining gender-affirming care.”
If that is not clear enough, read how the non-partisan, authoritative Legislative Counsel’s Digest describes SB 107. “The bill would additionally prohibit a court from considering the taking or retention of a child from a person who has legal custody of the child, if the taking or retention was for obtaining gender-affirming health care or mental health care.”
Matthew McReynolds, a senior attorney with the Pacific Justice Institute, believes this language provides an exception for certain instances of kidnapping.
SB 107 “takes a flying leap over the precipice,” McReynolds explained. “Actually declaring that it will welcome and protect kidnappers—including parents who have been adjudicated as unstable and unfit to care for their children—as long as the adult absconding with the child says they are doing so to put the child into gender-hormone therapy or some other, Orwellian gender-affirming care.”
“SB 107 may be the most brazen assault on fundamental parental rights in the history of this state,” McReynolds warned. “This is not a game, a spoof, or a joke. Families who thought they had escaped California will not be safe if this bill is enacted. It is time for citizens to call their legislators en masse to let them know they will be swept out of office this November if this bill passes.” (Read McReynolds letter of opposition here.)
Other California attorneys have expressed similar concerns. “SB 107 is a direct assault on parental rights and state rights which will cause great damage to children and families if enacted,” said attorney Dean Broyles, president of the National Center for Law and Policy. “It seeks to make California a sanctuary state for parents or guardians desiring to unilaterally facilitate the child abuse of minors struggling with gender dysphoria. It decimates the legal jurisdiction of other states, carving out an exception to well-established and universal legal prohibitions on kidnapping, by allowing children to be unlawfully brought to California, as long as the purpose is to seek “gender-affirming care.”
“Gender affirming care, in reality, is just a euphemism for medical child abuse—specifically giving children hormones that will sterilize them for life and lopping off perfectly functioning God-given body parts,” Broyles continued. “The social science is clear that most children are not prepared to make this important life-altering decision at a young age and that most will come to deeply regret it later. Adults who aid and abet this travesty should not have a get-out-of-jail-free card here in California. State-sanctioned child abuse is still child abuse. This extreme legislation will further cement California’s dark legacy as a pariah state.”
The president and founder of Protect Our Kids, Mark Schneider, Esq., is also appalled at the bill’s implications for parental rights.
“SB 107 would elevate the dangerous practice of ‘gender-affirming health care’ to a legal status never before granted to a state jurisdiction,” Schneider explained. “It would pit state against state and parent against parent.”
“It would enable grave and potentially irreversible emotional and physical harm to the most fragile of our citizens – our children,” Schneider said. “Furthermore, it demonstrates scorn for some of our nation’s most relied upon legal principles, like the Full Faith & Credit clause along with decades of civil, criminal, and constitutional law. Worse yet, it is a further and unprecedented assault on parental rights. SB-107 must be stopped.”
SB 107 is a bill CA legislators call a “gut-and-amend.” That means SB 107 started out in the Senate as a completely different bill, that Senator Wiener decided to turn into a completely different bill once it got to the Assembly. So technically, the current version of SB 107 has only gone through two Assembly Committees and passed along a party-line vote.
The next hearing in the Assembly Appropriations Committee is scheduled for August 3. If it passes the Assembly, it will have to go back to the Senate for approval. That means every legislator still has an opportunity to vote on this bill. If there is not an uproar, SB 107 is expected to pass.
