Child Protective Services Can Now 'Threaten' Parents to Lose Custody Over Refusal to Use Child's Preferred Pronouns

A legal battleground is forming across the United States as state legislatures move to codify gender identity affirmation into child custody law, placing parents who use a child's birth name or biological pronouns at risk of losing custody.

The tension sits at a crossroads of parental rights, religious liberty, and child welfare law. Courts and legislatures from Indiana to California and Colorado are either deciding, or have recently decided, whether a parent's rejection of a child's transgender identity can justify state intervention, including the removal of that child from the home.

For many parents, the threat feels not merely theoretical but immediate.

The Indiana Case That Reached the Supreme Court's Door

The most scrutinised case in this debate belongs to Mary and Jeremy Cox of Anderson, Indiana, devout Catholics who refused to use their child's preferred name and pronouns after she came out as transgender in 2019. In 2021, the Indiana Department of Child Services (DCS) received two separate reports alleging the couple had been 'verbally and emotionally abusing' their child because they did not accept her transgender identity.

DCS placed the child, identified in court records only as A.C., outside the home. The agency simultaneously secured a court order restricting the Coxes from discussing gender identity or human sexuality with their child outside of therapy sessions. Although DCS later voluntarily dismissed all abuse and neglect allegations, the child was never returned. Lower courts sided with DCS, citing A.C.'s severe eating disorder, which they found had been 'fuelled partly' by the family conflict.

The Indiana Court of Appeals, in its October 2022 ruling, acknowledged the difficulty of the case but upheld the removal. 'The Parents have the right to exercise their religious beliefs,' the court wrote, 'but they do not have the right to exercise them in a manner that causes physical or emotional harm to Child.'

Represented by the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, the Coxes escalated to the United States Supreme Court, arguing their case raised 'a legal question of nationwide importance: when can the state muzzle parental speech and remove a child from the home of admittedly fit parents?' In March 2024, SCOTUS declined to hear the appeal, leaving the lower court ruling intact, though without commentary.

California's Vetoed Bill and What It Sought to Do

The Indiana case was not a legislative product; it arose through child welfare proceedings. California, by contrast, attempted to encode the principle directly into family law. Assembly Bill 957, introduced in February 2023 by Assemblywoman Lori D. Wilson (D-Suisun City) and co-sponsored by State Senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco), would have amended Section 3011 of the California Family Code to include 'a parent's affirmation of the child's gender identity or gender expression as part of the health, safety, and welfare of the child,' a standard courts must weigh when resolving custody disputes.

The bill passed the California State Assembly 61–16 on 8 September 2023, and the State Senate 30–9 the same week, along party lines. Proponents argued the measure simply recognised that parental support was a documented protective factor against depression and suicide in transgender youth.

The Trevor Project, cited during hearings, has reported that 45 per cent of LGBTQ+ youth considered attempting suicide in a prior year. But critics warned the bill would hand courts the power to penalise parents in custody disputes purely for holding a dissenting view on gender.

Erin Friday, an attorney who testified against AB 957 before the California Assembly Judiciary Committee, told the hearing: 'There is no nuance in this bill. It matters not the age of the child, the absurdity of the identity, adopted comorbid mental health issues or persistence.'

Governor Gavin Newsom ultimately vetoed AB 957 in September 2023, returning it without signature. In his veto message he indicated concern that the legislation's framing could create undue legal exposure for parents still working through their response to a child's identity, though he did not dispute the underlying principle of gender-affirmative care.

Colorado's Kelly Loving Act and the Clause That Was Removed

Colorado moved further and faster than most states. House Bill 25-1312, formally named the Kelly Loving Act in honour of Kelly Loving, a transgender woman killed in the 2022 Club Q mass shooting, was introduced in the Colorado House in March 2025.

An early version of the bill included a provision under Section 2 that would have required courts to classify 'deadnaming, misgendering, or threatening to publish material related to an individual's gender-affirming health-care services' as forms of 'coercive control,' a legal designation courts already use in domestic violence and custody proceedings when assessing a child's best interests.

The coercive control clause drew immediate pushback. The bill faced headwinds in the state Senate, and Polis' office and prominent LGBTQ+ groups raised concerns about that and a related shield-law component. After several rounds of amendment, the custody provision was removed before final passage.

The Kelly Loving Act passed the Colorado legislature on 6 May 2025, and Governor Jared Polis signed it into law on 16 May 2025. As enacted, the law expands the state's anti-discrimination framework to include a person's 'chosen name and how the individual chooses to be expressed' as forms of gender expression covering workplaces, schools, and public accommodations. The custody provision did not survive.

However, the law has already drawn multiple constitutional challenges in federal court, including claims under the First Amendment's prohibition on compelled speech. As of June 2025, at least two lawsuits were pending in the District of Colorado.

The landscape remains fractured by design. Texas, moving in the opposite direction, has advanced House Bill 1106, which would amend the state's Family Code to explicitly exclude from the definitions of 'abuse' and 'neglect' a parent's refusal to use a child's preferred name or pronouns, effectively codifying the right to withhold gender affirmation without state interference. That bill would also prevent CPS from intervening in cases where a child alleges psychological harm resulting from parental non-affirmation.

The question of who has the final say over a child's identity: the parent, the child, or the state, remains, for now, unanswered.