Their Kids Said They Were Trans. Then CPS Came Knocking.

Morgan Davis started this job because he wanted to protect kids.

The 52-year-old had been an investigator with the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS) for less than a year and had come out as a transgender man shortly before starting his new job. Then Texas Gov. Greg Abbott issued an order demanding the department investigate parents of medically transitioning transgender children for abuse.

A "number of so-called 'sex change' procedures constitute child abuse under existing Texas law," Abbott declared in the February 2022 letter, which he sent a week before the Republican gubernatorial primary. Because DFPS "is responsible for protecting children from abuse," he continued, " I hereby direct your agency to conduct a prompt and thorough investigation of any reported instances of these abusive procedures in the State of Texas."

At first, the directive seemed hard to believe, especially since medical transition for minors—interventions such as puberty-blocking medication, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries—were legal in Texas. Texas legislators would eventually ban medical transition for minors, but that was more than a year in the future.

"Everybody thought this was a political stunt," Davis says. Within a day, Davis' department already had a case. According to Davis, it originated with a DFPS employee with a transgender child who was forced to report on her own family.

"The first thing I knew about the case was that it was a co-worker," Davis says. "I just couldn't believe it. Most of us get into [this line of work] because you wanted to be the protection that you didn't have. And here we were." Davis ended up investigating the family himself. "If somebody had to do it, I wanted it to be me," he says, because "I really thought at the time I could protect the family—but also if there was any abuse that was happening, I would know."

On the day of his home visit, Davis says, he tried to be as nonthreatening as possible. "I had my nicest bowtie on," he says, "and I brought pastries, to try to make it look like I was just showing up for a visit." But he was still self-conscious: He was an agent of the state, after all, one with the power to separate a family or keep it together in the name of child protection. "At the end of the day," Davis says, "it doesn't matter how trans or how nice [I was]. At the end of the day, I was an investigator."

Accustomed to deeply dysfunctional families, often living in chaotic, poorly maintained homes, Davis was struck by how normal and harmonious this family seemed. To his relief, the family had consulted with lawyers. An attorney sat in on Davis' interview with the child, a transgender girl around 15 years old. The family also refused to sign a form releasing their child's medical records—a move that further protected them from state prying.

It was hard not to feel frustrated by the situation. Davis had found a functional, loving family whose only error—in the eyes of the state of Texas—was that the parents had sought and received controversial but legal treatments for their child.

Davis says the home visit concluded without incident and the case seemed like a "slam dunk." But his supervisors told him he could not close the case, that it needed to be sent "up the food chain."

"I called my buddy and I said, 'I can't make this stop. I'm not going to be able to make this stop,'" Davis says. "It sounds dramatic, but I really did: I walked in an investigator, and I walked out an activist."

Since the state was investigating parents for legal behavior, lawsuits swiftly followed. One was filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) on behalf of the LGBTQ+ group PFLAG and several families.

"Governor Abbott's directive unduly interferes with the state Legislature's sole authority to establish criminal offenses and penalties," said the June 2022 petition in PFLAG v. Abbott. "The Abbott Letter outright claims that 'a number of so-called "sex change" procedures constitute child abuse under existing Texas law,' despite the fact that the Legislature has failed to pass" legislation to that effect.

It's not clear exactly how many people DFPS investigated as a result of Abbott's order. But six families ultimately joined two ACLU-backed lawsuits challenging the new policy.

The plaintiffs described nerve-racking home visits and investigations that dragged on despite turning up no evidence of abuse or neglect. One parent, identified as "Samantha Poe," said Child Protective Services (CPS), a division of DFPS, continued investigating her family even after receiving a letter from her 13-year-old gender-questioning child's psychiatrist confirming that the teenager, Whitley, was not receiving any medical transition treatments.

"Without my prior knowledge, a CPS investigator contacted a teacher at Whitley's middle school to ask about Whitley," Poe said in a written declaration submitted with the PFLAG v. Abbott lawsuit. "The teacher told me they were contacted and that they told the investigator Whitley is well cared for and Whitley's every need is being met. They also shared that they told the investigator that they had called CPS about other students they suspected were suffering from abuse at home, but received no response."

These probes were part of something much larger. During the last decade, a full-blown gender war has erupted in America. While much of the controversy relates to transgender adults, a particularly fraught element of the debate focuses on gender-dysphoric kids. The question of what exactly to do when children say they're transgender should be dominated by rigorous science and parental judgment. Instead, it has been clouded by politics.

In recent years, state-run medical agencies in such countries as Sweden, Norway, and Great Britain have recommended restricting medical transitions for minors, arguing that the risks outweigh the potential benefits. Twenty-four U.S. states have passed laws banning gender transition treatments for minors, and two others—New Hampshire and Arizona—have banned surgical procedures while keeping other treatments legal. While doctors suspicious of these treatments stress the lack of strong evidence supporting their efficacy, other physicians argue there is plenty of evidence that they work, often claiming that the controversy is driven by transphobia rather than legitimate medical concerns.

In Texas, the state responded to the dispute by siccing CPS on parents. Meanwhile, parents in several Democratic-controlled states say they have faced CPS investigations for resisting their children's medical or social transition.

When the state intervenes because officials dislike how parents are choosing to handle a child's gender dysphoria, that does not protect vulnerable kids. It shifts decisions on a difficult issue from parents—the people who know the children best and love them most—to impersonal, often politically motivated bureaucrats. What to do about childhood gender dysphoria is a live question, and a difficult one. But it's a question the state is ill-equipped to answer for individual families.

'We Need To Be Very Cautious'

"I think there should be a very thorough evaluation of every child, young person," says Erica Anderson, a clinical psychologist and former president of the United States Professional Association for Transgender Health (USPATH). "I've been for a long time now urging caution that we need to be very cautious about which kids go on to puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones."

Anderson, herself a transgender woman, has spent much of her career helping evaluate gender-dysphoric kids and their families seeking possible medical transition. "I've been critical of others who feel differently than I do, and in a sense, in my opinion, treat gender dysphoria or gender questioning as a medical condition," she adds. "I don't think there's evidence to support that view."

The modern debate over transgender-identified youth can be traced back to the 1990s, when the first cohorts of gender-distressed children were treated with what became known as the "Dutch protocol": medications to prevent the onset of puberty, followed by cross-sex hormones, then surgeries in adulthood.

As the Dutch protocol began spreading throughout Europe and the United States, the number of minors referred to gender clinics was fairly low. From 2011 to 2014, for example, fewer than 500 kids per year were referred to the U.K.'s main youth gender clinic, and not all of those kids received medical intervention. Children in this earlier cohort had typically experienced severe gender-related distress from a very young age, and most were natal males, according to Anderson.

But things began to change in the late 2010s. "Not only are there an increase in numbers of kids coming to gender clinics—and there are more gender clinics, particularly in North America—but the composition of the population coming to the gender clinics has changed from a fairly homogeneous group of kids to a very heterogeneous group of kids dominated by natal females," says Anderson.

These changes prompted some professional misgivings. "There are some of us who feel that we don't have a sufficient evidence base to decide which of these heterogeneous kids are best suited for medicalization," Anderson says.

"There's pretty widespread acknowledgment that some of the gender clinics, at least in the United States, do a very poor job of assessment," Anderson says. "The assessment in some cases consists of a brief interview with a mental health person, often a social worker, and then the patient is assigned to see the physician who can prescribe puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones. In my opinion, having a short half-hour—even an hour—interview one time is insufficient in evaluating these kids who are coming to gender clinics."

According to a 2022 Reuters investigation, more than 120,000 American kids were diagnosed with gender dysphoria from 2017 through 2021. Still, only a small minority received medical intervention. Around 15,000 adolescents received hormone therapy during this time, and around 5,000 of these kids were placed on puberty blockers. Surgical interventions were even rarer. Reuters found that at least 776 minors with a gender dysphoria diagnosis received mastectomies—also known as "top surgery"—in this period. Just 56 received genital surgeries.

Anderson says that thorough assessments are so important because puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones can bring worrisome side effects, such as severe sexual dysfunction and infertility, not to mention the unknown developmental risks of delaying natural puberty.

In light of these risks, several countries have pulled back their youth gender medicine programs. Many leading U.S. medical organizations, on the other hand, have rejected the criticism. (Anderson herself resigned from USPATH after the organization considered barring its members from speaking to the press.)

As more than two dozen red states have banned at least some medical transition treatments for minors, many blue states responded with policies of their own. In 2023, Washington state lifted the requirement that youth shelters notify a minor's parents if the child left home to seek medical transition. School districts around the country, as well as the state governments of New Jersey and California, have discouraged teachers from informing parents if their child socially transitions at school.

'Better in the Hands of Their Parents'

Anderson is concerned about the possibility that CPS will intervene when parents won't consent to a child's medical transition, especially if the child's other parent disagrees. "There are some child protection workers who are given to believe…that the failure to consent to medicalization, to gender intervention, is abuse," she says. "So then the nonconsenting parent then gets accused of child abuse or neglect."

Sure enough, even as Texas officially demanded that CPS investigate the parents of transgender kids, families that express skepticism about social or medical transition for their children sometimes face a less formalized, but no less invasive, state scrutiny. Parents who resisted pursuing transition for their children have found themselves under CPS investigation after an overzealous teacher or school administrator reported them to the authorities.

Sarah (not her real name) and her husband were initially very supportive when their 12-year-old daughter came out as trans. The couple, who lived in California, used her new name and pronouns, let her dress in male clothes, and consented to giving her puberty blockers.

"We were told the famous line: 'Would you rather have a live son or a dead daughter?'" Sarah says. "And when your kid is suicidal, nothing [else] matters at that point. At that point I was naive and trusted the medical advice. I thought the people in the field knew better than me and was desperate and terrified to lose my daughter."

Although Sarah says she and her husband fully affirmed their daughter's new identity and even agreed to an increased dosage of puberty blockers at their doctor's suggestion, the child's mental health continued to deteriorate. "We found that every step that we took…made her mental health worse," Sarah says. "She might have temporarily been happy, but then it faded and then her mental health [problem] manifested back up. It was never really resolved….We were living in crisis management, not knowing if I was going to wake up and find her dead in her room the following morning."

Sarah knew something had to change. "I came out of the work force at the height of my career," she says, "and then started really pounding the pavement and saying to myself, 'OK, the definition of insanity is to do the same thing but expect a different outcome.' I knew I had to do something different."

Sarah eventually found a psychiatrist for her daughter who neither uncritically accepted nor uncritically dismissed the idea that she was transgender. Sarah says her daughter's mental health improved significantly after she worked with this new therapist, who took an "exploratory" approach to gender distress. She came off the puberty blockers and began going by a more gender-neutral name.

"I was able to sleep at night," Sarah says. "I wasn't up at night constantly patrolling and checking in on her…and opening the doors to make sure she was OK. I didn't have to do that. I actually got sleep."

Sarah's daughter still had ups and downs, though. According to Sarah, her daughter, then a high school freshman, went to the school counselor at one point and expressed some confusion and distress over her shifting gender identity. Sarah says the school counselor told her daughter that the counselor would have to call CPS.

"So then my daughter gets scared and she texts the psychiatrist, and the psychiatrist warns me that this is coming," Sarah says. "Probably hours later, I get a call on my voicemail from Child Protective Services. And we were panicked when we received that phone call."

Sarah hired an attorney to sit in on the eventual CPS home visit, and she ultimately was able to have her case fully closed. But the experience was still terrifying for the family. Sarah says that her daughter, now a student at a women's college, no longer identifies as trans—a claim that is corroborated by her daughter's social media presence. Sarah declined to make her daughter available for an interview, telling Reason in an email that "this topic is still rather triggering/upsetting for her," adding, "We don't want to put her through this again, but are sharing our story to hopefully help other families."

"We hear from many, many, many more families than we have the ability to bring lawsuits," says Vernadette Broyles, president and general counsel of the Child and Parental Rights Campaign. Broyles specializes in cases like Sarah's, as well as cases where trans-identified kids are actually removed by CPS. She says that she's worked on at least 15 cases that involved trans-identified children—cases that ranged from CPS investigations, child custody disputes, and parents who objected to a social transition at school—though her organization has provided "support or advocacy" to substantially more parents.

"It's so important for judges to recognize that these children are better in the hands of their parents," Broyles says. "And parents need to have the freedom to do what they know to be in the best interest" of their children.

'You Want Me To Do What?'

In March 2022, a Travis County, Texas, judge granted a temporary injunction in Doe v. Abbott, halting the enforcement of Abbott's order. But just over two months later, the Texas Supreme Court narrowed the scope of the injunction significantly, limiting it to the plaintiffs in the case.

In September, a different temporary injunction was issued in PFLAG v. Abbott, this time barring DFPS from "investigating members of PFLAG, including but not limited to Plaintiff Families, for possible child abuse or neglect solely based on allegations that they have a minor child who is gender transitioning or alleged to be receiving or being prescribed medical treatment for gender dysphoria."

While both injunctions are still embroiled in legal battles, with the state appealing the decisions, they were still regarded as a major victory for trans youth and their families.

"Today, families of transgender kids in Texas who are members of PFLAG National find shelter from Gov. Abbott's unjust order," Brian K. Bond, executive director of PFLAG National, said in a September 2022 press release. "Every LGBTQ+ person deserves respect, dignity and the right to access the care they need when they need it."

Less than a year later, Abbott signed Senate Bill 14, which prohibited Texas doctors from providing medical transition treatments to minors. The Texas Supreme Court upheld that law in June 2024, rejecting the argument that it violated parental rights guaranteed by the state constitution. That month, Texas filed petitions with the state Supreme Court, seeking to overturn the previous injunctions.

Despite a few victories for families investigated by CPS, the broader public fight over how to address gender dysphoria in minors—especially when it comes to medical interventions—is not going away anytime soon.

"One of the reasons why this is so hard, why we have a very divided set of circumstances here, is that traditionally, courts have relied on medical experts to determine [what's] necessary in terms of the treatment of children," says Naomi Schaefer Riley, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute who focuses on child welfare and foster care. "You can now get a medical expert to testify that if this child does not receive gender transition treatment they're going to commit suicide. But you can also get a medical expert to say cutting off a child's genitals is child abuse."

The vast majority of the parents who find themselves in these difficult situations sincerely want what's best for their children. They know their kids better than anyone else and love them more fiercely than any social worker or teacher ever will. Parents in this situation would do nearly anything to take away their children's pain and help them grow into happy, healthy adults. The last thing they need is misguided state intrusion into their lives.

Davis ultimately resigned from DFPS. He says after a brief period working under the new regime, he realized he was unable to continue working for an agency that was wasting time and resources on politically motivated investigations of loving families with transgender children. "I'm working nights, weekends, holidays, and I'm trying to keep these kids safe," he says. "And you want me to do what? You want me to go into homes that you know are safe?…This is wrong."