Sen. Eric Schmitt, a Missouri Republican, has introduced a bill to protect parents from state-sponsored kidnapping by social workers when the parents refuse to agree to a child’s identification as transgender. The Yaeli Martinez Child Protection Act of 2026 is named after a 19-year-old California woman who committed suicide after being socially transitioned by her public school as a minor and taken from her family home by child protection caseworkers.
“Raising a child according to his or her sex is not abuse,” the bill declares. “Removal from fit parents is contrary to the best interests of children, creates trauma for the child, damages familial bonds, and exposes the child to well-documented risks in state custody. Children have suffered great harm and even have died after being removed from loving families by the state for sex-rejecting interventions.”
The bill would block federal funding administered under the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act for states, tribes, and organizations that participate in the removal of children from the homes of parents who don’t affirm the supposed transgender identity of children.
The bill would add to federal law the declaration that a parent “has the right to affirm a child’s sex,” including the refusal of “the provision, facilitation, funding, authorization, or permission of any sex-rejecting intervention for the child.” It would also codify the right of parents to refuse “the use of pronouns or titles that do not correspond to the child’s sex.”
Finally, the bill would create a private right of action for parents to sue in federal court over the limitation of parental rights by any entity that attempts to socially “transition” children or perform surgical or hormonal interventions without parental consent, including the use of “pronouns or titles that do not correspond to the child’s sex.”
The parental rights organization Our Duty has argued that preventing the state removal from family homes of children who declare transgender identity is an urgent task: “Ending the ideological weaponization of child protective services is one of our most important fights.”
In a sign of how far we’ve wandered from a normal understanding of the parent-child relationship, the bill explicitly declares the obvious: “A parent, legal guardian, caregiver, foster parent, prospective foster parent, or prospective adoptive parent has a right to be free from discrimination or adverse State action for affirming or intending to affirm a child’s sex.”
In a statement provided by his office, Schmitt condemned “radical gender ideology” and the ongoing blue state attack on family relationships.
“This ideology is inflicting irreversible treatments and procedures on children, but parents in blue states who disagree are punished and even torn from their own kids they are trying to protect,” he said. “It’s disgusting these states want to use the welfare state to separate families and we must defend parents’ right to choose what’s best for their own children.”
A video from the Daily Signal discusses the deeply sad example of Yaeli Martinez and her encounter with “child protection” caseworkers that destroyed her life:
