The European Union rejected a call to ban conversion therapy on Wednesday, even after over a million people petitioned for the ban in its 27 member states.
Last month, the European Parliament voted in favor of a ban on conversion therapy. The vote came after the European Citizens’ Initiative petitioned the European Parliament to take up the matter after 1.2 million people signed a petition.
The matter was then sent to the European Commission, the only body that can introduce binding legislation in the EU. But the European Commission has rejected the call, saying that the EU does not have the authority to force member states to ban the harmful practice.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said that conversion therapy has “no place in our union” and that the EU will push each individual member state to ban the practice in a recommendation to be published next year. That recommendation will be non-binding.
The European Commission flew the rainbow flag outside its headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, yesterday, Le Monde reports.
The EU’s Agency for Fundamental Rights said in 2024 that one in four LGBTQ+ European citizens is the victim of conversion therapy practices, which have been linked to depression, low self-esteem, substance abuse issues, anxiety, suicidality, and other mental health issues. Ten of the 27 EU member states already ban the practice.
The group Against Conversion Therapy, which launched the original petition, called the decision a “missed opportunity” in a statement.
“In an international political context where the rise of reactionary ideas is affecting the entire world, it is urgent the European Union acts,” the group said.
European Commissioner for Equality Hadja Lahbib hailed the decision to encourage member states to ban the practice as “historic,” the LA Times reports.
“Conversion practices are built on a lie, the lie that LGBTQ+ people need to be fixed, that there is something wrong with who they are,” Lahbib said after listening to victim testimony. “And there is, of course, nothing to fix, there is nothing to cure, and there is no one to change.”
“You cannot torture away a person’s identity, and you cannot legislate it away. And yet these practices continue, unfortunately.”
Last month, the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) held a debate on conversion therapy before it voted to recommend that Europe ban the practice.
“These so-called conversion practices or therapies are not only harmful, they are a profound violation of human dignity and fundamental rights,” said EESC President Séamus Boland during the debate, according to an EESC release. “Let us be absolutely clear: there is nothing to fix or cure. What needs to change is not people, but the systems, attitudes, and structures that deny them their dignity.”
Graeme Reid, the United Nations independent expert on sexual orientation and gender identity, also spoke during the debate, saying that banning conversion therapy is key to the EU meeting its human rights obligations and that “every person has the right to live free from coercion, fear and shame.”
The United Nations has called for conversion therapy to be banned worldwide. Last month, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that conversion therapy practices are protected by the First Amendment and can only be banned if states can meet the high legal requirements involved in curtailing religious free exercise.
The Texas attorney general has secured an unusual settlement over child transgender care that compels Texas Children’s Hospital to create the nation’s first ever “detransition clinic” in addition to paying the state $10 million.
According to Attorney General Ken Paxton, the multidisciplinary clinic would offer medical care to patients “who were subjected to ‘gender-transition’ procedures.” The care would be free to patients for the first five years of the clinic’s operation. The move follows an investigation that began in 2023 by the attorney general’s office into Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston. That same year, Gov. Greg Abbott signed Senate Bill 14 that bars transgender children from receiving puberty blockers and hormone therapies.
Gender-affirming care is an umbrella term for the treatment of gender dysphoria, or the discomfort that comes when someone’s gender identity does not align with the sex they were assigned at birth. Gender-affirming care ranges from “socially transitioning” — using different pronouns or dressing differently — to puberty blockers, hormone therapy and surgical interventions.
“Today is a monumental day in the fight to stop the radical transgender movement,” Paxton said in a statement issued Friday. “I applaud Texas Children’s Hospital for changing course and committing to being a part of the solution by agreeing to form a first-of-its kind Detransition Clinic that will help provide free care to those who have been victimized by twisted, morally bankrupt transgender ideology.”
Texas Children’s will fund all services provided through the “detransition clinic” for the first five years.
The settlement also requires the hospital to pay $10 million for billing Texas Medicaid after the state accused the hospital of illegal ‘gender-transition’ interventions, including by using false diagnosis codes. It also required Texas Children’s to terminate and revoke the medical privileges of five physicians. Paxton and the hospital have not released the name of the physicians or a copy of the settlement.
Texas Children’s, the nation’s largest pediatric hospital, said in a statement that it made the “difficult decision” to settle with the attorney general’s office to close a legal chapter that has been, “wrought with falsehoods and distractions.”
The hospital said it spent three three years producing more than 5 million documents to both the state and the U.S. Department of Justice.
“All reviews and investigations continue to support the facts – we have been compliant with all laws,” the hospital statement said. “To be clear – we are settling to protect our resources from endless and costly litigation … We stand proud knowing we will always put our purpose over politics and that we have and will continue to follow the law.”
The Texas Medical Association and Texas Hospital Association declined to answer questions for the story.
Unclear what services clinic will provide
Texas Children’s, one of the world’s leading pediatric hospitals based in the heart of Houston’s medical center, did not say how it will roll out its clinic or what services it will provide, though the hospital said in the statement that the clinic will include “supportive, multidisciplinary services we already deliver to all patients who need our care.”
Detransitioning is the stopping or reversal of transitioning care by social, medical or legal means, and it is rare for people to regret transitioning after taking hormone therapy and surgical interventions.
On the clinical side, detransitioning could mean stopping hormone treatment or procedures to reverse previous surgeries. Similar to transitioning, detransitioning requires intensive mental health assessments to root out other factors that might be creating the desire to stop transitioning, according to research. Common reasons for destransitioning include lack of family support, financial barriers and social pressure.
When someone chooses to detransition, “it is not normally because of healthcare complications,” said Andrea Segovia, senior field and policy director for the Transgender Education Network of Texas.
Segovia is concerned that access to mental healthcare will not be woven into the clinic’s services. In March, Paxton released an opinion saying that mental health providers licensed by the state cannot provide gender-transitioning care to minors under state law. It’s not clear if Paxton believes state law bars detransitioning mental healthcare as well.
For those who do want to detransition, the resources already exist, said Kellan Baker, senior advisor for the Movement Advancement Project, a national think tank that focuses on LGBTQ policies.
Detransitioning services, although they are rarely needed, can and have been offered properly when accompanied with mental health resources. But Baker said he’s not confident that this clinic, born out of a heated conflict between a hospital and the attorney general, has the best intentions for the transgender community.
“Texas Children’s is not creating this clinic — the Texas attorney general is creating it,” Baker said. “A clinic created by a politician via legal intimidation is not in the best interests of any patient. Doctors should be the ones making decisions about how to provide medical care, not politicians.”
‘Resource that no one is asking for’
Brad Pritchett, CEO of Equality Texas, a nonprofit that advocates for the LGBTQ community, said in a statement that the attorney general is “blackmailing a hospital system into creating a resource that no one is asking for.”
Pritchett said Texas’ politically-motivated detransition clinic “ignores the actual science and years of data about the overwhelming benefits of gender-affirming care.”
Several medical associations including the American Medical Association, American Academy of Pediatrics, American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and American Psychiatric Association, have supported evidence-based gender-transitioning care as appropriate and medically necessary for children.
Pritchett added that it is “embarrassing that a hospital once revered for its care has lost its integrity and put politics over patients.”
Dallas state Rep. Jessica González who chairs the Texas House LGBTQ Caucus said in a statement that the settlement is “shameful, and is the furthering of an agenda to eradicate transgender people from the eyes of society.”
Transgender people make up about 1% of the population, which is why, Segovia said, it is “infuriating” that the state is creating the detransition clinic as access to other healthcare services are struggling — such as rural hospitals and reproductive care.
Texas Children’s has to fully fund the clinic for five years, which will take away attention and limited resources from the hospital’s other departments such as care for children with cancer and infants with heart conditions, González said.
“Using a settlement to compel a hospital to build an ideologically framed clinic opens the door to more state interference in medical practice, more dangerous stigmatization that truly harms
young Texans, and, sadly, more lives lost in our nation’s suicide epidemic,” said González, one of the few only queer representatives in Texas.
Houston state Sen. Molly Cook, who is also openly queer, said Paxton is manufacturing a political spectacle because providers know how to help someone detransition and the state doesn’t need a clinic to train them on it.
“This is an asinine waste of money that is typical of Texas’s out-of-touch statewide leadership,” Cook said in a statement. “Texas Children’s already provides care for patients who choose to change a course of treatment.”
The need for such a clinic in Texas is made even smaller by the fact that the state’s ban on gender-transitioning care for minors has resulted in very few Texas children receiving such care statewide.
The five doctors that Paxton said Texas Children’s will need to fire adds to the four doctors he’s already sued to stop providing gender-affirming care. He’s also sued Children’s Health System of Texas, headquartered in Dallas, accusing them of violating SB 14. Some parts of Texas already suffer from a pediatric endocrinologist shortage in the wake of SB 14.
Segovia with the Transgender Education Network of Texas said she’s worried that other states will follow Texas’ lead in forcing more of these clinics to open.
“It’s terrifying what other states will take from this.”
Colorado’s legislature has just passed a bill to curtail conversion therapy in the state. It now goes to Gov. Jared Polis‘ (D) desk. Polis is gay, has been supportive of LGBTQ+ rights in the past, and is expected to sign it.
The bill, H.B. 26-1322, or the Civil Actions for Conversion Therapy Survivors Act, would allow conversion therapy survivors to sue therapists for damages if they tried to change their sexual orientation or gender identity.
The bill defines conversion therapy as treatment provided by a licensed mental health professional with the “predetermined outcome” of changing someone’s gender identity or sexual orientation. This effectively keeps the bill from applying to members of the clergy or lay ministries – most conversion therapy in the U.S. is performed by religious organizations, not licensed therapists – and creates an exemption for discussions of LGBTQ+ identities that come up in therapy, a matter of contention in a recent Supreme Court case.
The legislation passed the state senate last week in a party-line vote after already passing the Colorado House of Representatives. The state senate amended the bill so it had to pass the state house again, which happened late last week, the Colorado Daily Camera reports.
The bill was introduced as the Supreme Court considered a challenge to Colorado’s previous ban on conversion therapy, passed in 2019. That ban on conversion therapy has never been enforced in the state, but a Christian therapist sued, saying that it violated her freedom of speech. She argued that it would ban her from even discussing LGBTQ+ identities with her clients, even though the state said repeatedly that it would not.
The Court ultimately ruled against the ban in Chiles v. Salazar, saying that it violated therapists’ First Amendment rights, and sent the case back to a lower court to reevaluate the law under a higher legal standard. Experts believe this means that Colorado’s 2019 conversion therapy ban – and bans like it passed in 26 other states and hundreds of municipalities – will likely eventually be overturned by courts.
The new bill is an attempt to circumvent the Court’s decision by treating it as a civil matter. The bill was introduced by state Reps. Alex Valdez (D) and Karen McCormick (D), and in the Colorado Senate by state Sens. Lisa Cutter (D) and Kyle Mullica (D).
LGBTQ+ rights advocates supported the bill, including trans National Center for LGBTQ Rights Legal Director Shannon Minter, who referred to the Supreme Court’s decision in Chiles as “specific guidance about how to amend conversion therapy laws to be viewpoint-neutral.”
“Given the urgency of this issue and the danger that conversion therapy poses to youth, Colorado moved swiftly,” he said. “Today this legislation is moving to the desk of Governor Polis and will protect Colorado’s youth and families from this discredited practice.”
“Colorado’s story is still being written, and today we took another step toward becoming a state where LGBTQIA+ people can live openly, safely, and fully as themselves,” said One Colorado executive director Nadine Bridges in a statement. “This victory belongs to the survivors, advocates, and community members who refused to let this issue be forgotten.”
Conversion therapy is a harmful practice based on the idea that LGBTQ+ identities are the result of trauma and that LGBTQ+ people need to fundamentally change who they are in order to be a good person. The practice has been linked to several harmful results, including anxiety, depression, eating disorders, and suicidality.
The Acceptance Academy Community School, a private, nonprofit middle school serving LGBTQ+ students, bullied youth, and those who struggle to thrive in traditional school environments, is now accepting applications for the August 2026 semester at its Boca Raton campus.
Serving students in grades 6 through 8, The Acceptance Academy is the first school of its kind in Florida and participates in the Step Up for Students scholarship (voucher) program.
“Students at The Acceptance Academy Community School will receive a strong academic foundation in a safe, inclusive, and welcoming environment,” said Stephen Gaskill, co-founder and president of The Acceptance Academy Foundation, the 501(c)(3) organization that operates the school. “We focus not only on academic excellence but also on character development, giving students the opportunity to learn and grow alongside peers who share similar experiences.”
The need for specialized, supportive educational environments is increasing. According to a recent report from the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), many students reported a more hostile school climate during the 2024–2025 academic year amid heightened anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric. Key findings include:
Two in three students reported feeling unsafe due to their sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression
Only one in three LGBTQ+ students frequently look forward to attending school
More than half (53%) experienced LGBTQ+-related discrimination, including restricted access to facilities aligned with their gender identity
“Students succeed when they feel supported—by both their peers and the adults around them,” said Dr. Mindy Koch, Ed.D., co-founder and principal of The Acceptance Academy Community School. “Our classrooms emphasize critical thinking, problem-solving, and real-world application, preparing students to navigate life with confidence.”
The school is located in the heart of Boca Raton and offers access to a state-of-the-art gym, music room, library, extracurricular programs, and after-school activities.
Applications are now open for the August semester. Small class sizes ensure personalized, hands-on learning, allowing every student to actively participate and excel. Students from Palm Beach and Broward Counties are welcome, whether transitioning from public school, private school, or homeschooling.
“There’s a real demand for a safe space for kids to learn and to be themselves and middle school years are particularly the time when kids are starting to grow. That’s why we’re focusing on that age area,” Gaskill said.
“Hopefully a school like this gives them the opportunity to figure out how to negotiate and work together with other people who are not totally like them and be successful in the world,” Dr. Koch explained.
But the idea of a school focused on LGBTQ+ students is also raising questions, including concerns about safety.
“What kind of security measures do you plan to have around the school? Because there may be people who would, you hate to say it, may want to act out against the LGBTQ community if they know a number of students are here,” we asked Gaskill. “Well, certainly we hope that that’s not the case, but we have significant security and the building is secure and I just want to leave it that,” he said.
We also asked people in the community what they think.
“The kids want it then I want it. But realistically speaking, I’m not sure that’s such a good idea. If you’re ridiculed in school, I think you have to learn with it when you’re that age,” said Richard Young, a Boca Raton resident.
“I think we need to support it as a community,” said Sal Cohen, a Wellington resident.
“I think it’s a wonderful idea and very needed,” said Donna Traum, a Boca Raton resident.
Tuition is approximately half the cost of many private schools in Palm Beach County. Tuition is $20,000 a year. With an $8,000 state voucher, families would pay about $12,000. The first day of classes for the 2026–2027 school year is Monday, August 10, 2026.
The Acceptance Academy Foundation also welcomes tax-deductible contributions from individuals and organizations to support its mission.
The Acceptance Academy Foundation was founded by Dr. Mindy Koch and Stephen Gaskill, both of whom bring decades of experience in education and public service and share a commitment to the school’s long-term success.
Dr. Mindy Koch has served in Florida’s education system for more than 40 years as a teacher, department chair, administrator, and principal across elementary, middle, and high school levels in Broward and Palm Beach Counties. An award-winning educator, she has developed curricula, managed faculty, and overseen institutional budgets. She also founded Educational Extra, Inc., a SACS-accredited nonprofit providing summer academic programs. Dr. Koch serves as principal of The Acceptance Academy Community School.
The European Parliament voted in favor of a ban on conversion therapy this Wednesday. The demand is now being sent to the European Commission for a response.
The move comes after the European Citizens’ Initiative successfully petitioned the European Parliament to take up the issue. Starting in 2024, the ECI gathered over 1.2 million signatures from EU citizens to ban conversion therapy.
The European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) held a debate on the matter earlier this week, which resulted in the committee adopting two opinions, one calling for stronger enforcement of the EU’s LGBTIQ+ Equality Strategy 2026–2030 and the other calling for a ban on conversion therapy throughout the EU.
While seven member states ban conversion therapy, including France, Portugal, and Spain, speakers at the EESC pointed out that conversion therapy is still practiced in parts of the EU.
“These so-called conversion practices or therapies are not only harmful, they are a profound violation of human dignity and fundamental rights,” said EESC President Séamus Boland during the debate, according to an EESC release. “Let us be absolutely clear: there is nothing to fix or cure. What needs to change is not people, but the systems, attitudes, and structures that deny them their dignity.”
Graeme Reid, the United Nations independent expert on sexual orientation and gender identity, also spoke during the debate, saying that banning conversion therapy is key to the EU meeting its human rights obligations and that “every person has the right to live free from coercion, fear and shame.”
Colorado Governor Jared Polis (D) has signed a law to protect trans children by sealing name changes for those who are under 18 when they file for one. The legislation will protect trans children
“Passing this bill is simple, but its impact is profound,” Colorado state Senator Katie Wallace (D), a sponsor of the bill, said in February. “It gives children the safety and dignity they deserve, and it treats their private life with the same care we afford in other sensitive cases.”
Colorado’s Senate Bill 18, “Legal Protections for Dignity of Minors,” simply makes it so that starting July 1, when anyone who is under 18 years old petitions for a name change, the court is required to suppress the record. That means the petition will not be part of the public record and cannot be collected through searches or data harvesting.
The only exception to the process is if the petitioner was previously convicted of a felony.
While the court will keep a record for administrative purposes, it cannot publish the petitioners’ names or their deadnames. The record can only be accessed by the petitioner or by someone who has obtained the petitioner’s verbal consent and submitted an affidavit to that effect.
The bill will easily benefit anyone who might want to change their name as a child, whether to have a name they feel more connected to or to distance themselves from a family name. While the language of the bill itself does not mention trans people, it will have a huge impact for trans kids, which has always been the mission of the legislation.
At a senate committee hearing in February, Z Williams, co-director of Bread and Roses Legal Center, spoke of how a parent thought someone in their child’s class might be trans and was able to search for their name change document online and out the second grader to the school, Colorado Newslinereported.
Williams said the parent “exposed that child is transgender in second grade to the entire school community through flyers and through her own children, not only practicing hate herself, but teaching others how to. That is why we asked the senators and representatives to run this bill.”
At the same hearing, Elsie Fierro, the political and policy director at LGBTQ+ advocacy organization One Colorado, shared the story of a Colorado family who had petitioned for a name change on behalf of their trans child. But when they searched the new name online, a search engine returned results that included the child’s deadname along with identifying information that had been scraped from public court documents. “That family spent months trying to remove it and protect their minor child in an increasingly hostile political climate. This is the reality some families are navigating,” Fierro told the committee.
In the face of Republican opposition, state Sen. Wallace said, “This bill will protect children from AI data-scraping of those public records, the potential of bullying if they should be found and from hostile individuals in the wider world.”
The bill was originally intended to do even more good, but had a section stripped from it in February. It originally sought to instruct family court judges to consider acceptance of a child’s gender identity when determining custody cases. Several studies, including one by The Trevor Project, have linked trans children being connected to accepting adults to lower risk for depression and suicide attempts.
The custody clauses had originally been included in an earlier bill, HB 1312, which passed last year and introduced legal protections for trans people against deadnaming, misgendering, and more. However, they were removed before it passed after LGBTQ+ groups raised concerns that the language could erode existing protections.
For SB 18, the clauses had been reworked, but Polis threatened to veto the bill unless the clauses were removed, claiming to have received word of similar concerns once again. However, state Sen. Wallace and Williams both suggested that Polis’ view of the provisions being “substantially the same” was incorrect and that they had been amended to assuage concerns.
Colorado Republicans have opposed this bill and other pro-trans legislation, pushing anti-trans bills in their place. However, Democrats currently hold a supermajority in the state and have been defending trans rights with new protections.
Authorities have charged a Utah transgender woman with kidnapping her own 10-year-old child.
According to an April 21 press release issued by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Utah, Rose Inessa-Ethington and her partner, Blue Inessa-Ethington, have been charged with International Parental Kidnapping for allegedly taking Rose’s daughter, who is also trans, to Cuba without the consent or knowledge of Rose’s ex-wife, with whom she shared custody.
As the Washington Blade reports, in an affidavit filed on April 16, FBI Special Agent Jennifer Waterfield alleges that the 10-year-old, identified as “Minor Victim 1” (MV 1), traveled to Canada with the Inessa-Ethingtons and Blue’s 3-year-old child on March 28 for a planned camping trip. But, Waterfield’s affidavit alleges, the group never arrived at either their hotel or the campground, and after MV 1 contacted her mother on March 28, the Inessa-Ethingtons were unreachable.
The group allegedly flew from Vancouver to Mexico City on March 29, and from there to Havana, Cuba, on April 1, which was confirmed by Mexican immigration authorities, according to the affidavit.
Rose Inessa-Ethington’s custody agreement with her former spouse, identified in the affidavit as “LB,” stipulated that MV 1 would be returned to LB on April 3. According to Waterfield, this never happened. According to Waterfield’s affidavit, “Interviews of MV 1’s family members provided significant concerns for MV 1’s well-being, as MV 1 was born a male, however, identifies as a female child, which is largely believed to be due to manipulation by Rose Inessa-Ethington. Concerns exist that MV 1 was transported to Cuba for gender reassignment surgery prior to puberty.”
Cuba’s national healthcare system has provided free gender-affirming surgeries since 2008, but the AP notes that gender-affirming surgery is banned for minors in the Caribbean nation. Gender-affirming surgery is difficult for adults to access in Cuba.
Upon searching the Inessa-Ethingtons’ home, authorities found “to-do” lists that included items like “Confirm Cuba limit- 100lb/50lb/1 bag/ 2 bags,” and “empty USU bank.” They also found a note that allegedly included instructions from a Washington, D.C., mental health therapist “on gender affirming medical care for children.” The affidavit does not specify whether this note included any information about gender-affirming surgeries, and it is unclear whether MV 1 was already receiving gender-affirming medical care.
A 2023 Utah law banned gender-affirming surgeries for minors — despite such surgeries being exceptionally rare — and instituted an indefinite moratorium on providing puberty blockers and hormone replacement therapy (HRT) to minors for the purposes of gender-affirming care.
In her affidavit, Waterfield said that she believed that “due to the extensive planning and preparation exhibited by both Rose Inessa-Ethington and Blue Inessa-Ethington to isolate MV 1 and take MV 1 to Havana, Cuba, without notifying or requesting permission from MV 1’s mother indicates they are likely not planning to return to the United States with MV 1,” and requested an arrest warrant for both parties.
As the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Utah notes, a judge in Utah ordered MV 1 returned to LB and granted her sole custody on April 13. Authorities in Cuba located the Inessa-Ethingtons on April 16, and they were later deported back to Richmond, Virginia, on a Department of Justice plane, where they were arraigned.
“We decided to call her ‘Amada’ because she came into our home to be cherished,” said Lorena Bonilla, whose transgender daughter was recently authorized to change her identity documents under a ruling by Ecuador’s Constitutional Court.
Her case — alongside another decided in March — has opened the door for Ecuadorian adolescents seeking to modify their name and sex in official records. Adults gained that right after years of advocacy efforts culminating in a 2024 reform.
“In Ecuador there are still political, religious and social sectors that portray gender recognition for adolescents as a threat,” said Cristian González Cabrera, an LGBTQ+ rights researcher at Human Rights Watch. “That climate can translate into institutional hostility, delays and unjustified denials.”
Bonilla and her daughter, 17, experienced that firsthand in 2018. Their legal battle began when Amada was 9 and school authorities refused to admit her because her legal documents did not match her gender identity.
“We went through 14 schools and none would take her in,” Bonilla said. “We then knew we needed to change her name.”
A court initially granted Amada the right to modify her identity documents. But the civil registry appealed the decision and a higher court later ruled that her passport and ID card should reflect her birth name and sex.
“It was a step backward for our rights,” Bonilla said.
LGBTQ+ rights in Ecuador have largely been shaped by court rulings rather than by lawmakers or government officials. A similar dynamic has unfolded in other Andean countries such as Colombia and Peru.
“The legislative and executive branches represent the country’s broad majorities, yet LGBTQ people are often overlooked,” said Christian Paula, president of the Pakta Foundation, which provides legal support in cases like Amada’s. “Turning to the courts reflects a lack of openness and sensitivity within our institutions.”
Among Ecuador’s most important advances in LGBTQ+ rights, three have come through the courts. They include the decriminalization of homosexuality in 1997, a 2009 ruling that allowed an Ecuadorian transgender woman to change her name, and the legalization of same-sex marriage in 2019.
Those court decisions sparked a backlash from right-wing and religious groups.
In a post on X following the Constitutional Court’s 2026 rulings, André Santos, president of one of Ecuador’s most vocal conservative groups, said the court had overstepped its authority. He has also spoken against school protocols allowing students to use uniforms and bathrooms that align with their gender identity.
The country’s Catholic bishops conference also expressed concern over the court’s action. “Allowing adolescents to make decisions of this nature poses serious risks to their overall development,” it said.
President Daniel Noboa has not been as outspoken against transgender causes as some other conservative leaders in Latin America, but his administration has shown little support for LGBTQ+ rights.
As a candidate, he pledged to defend the traditional family. Since taking office, violence and economic instability have overshadowed gender and diversity issues in his political agenda.
“What worries us are his ministers,” said Diane Rodríguez, a lawyer and president of Ecuadorian LGBTQ+ organization Silueta X.
Rodríguez, a trans woman, pointed to officials in the Education Ministry, including current minister Gilda Alcívar, who has rejected the inclusion of what she calls “gender ideology” in education. That climate, Rodríguez said, is reflected in her daily interactions.
From Guayaquil, where she raises a 4-year-old daughter with her partner, a trans man, Rodríguez has faced difficulties at her child’s school.
“We had trouble enrolling her because people see me and assume I’m going to turn children transgender because of how I look,” Rodríguez said.
Throughout her career, she has provided legal support for people facing sex-based discrimination and backed a program providing hormone treatment for trans people. Her work has also focused on raising awareness about violence against her community.
Silueta X publishes an annual record of killings of LGBTQ+ people. Its first report in 2013 documented two killings and the numbers have risen every year. The 2025 publication reported 30 deaths, 21 of them trans women.
Amada told her parents that she was a girl at age 3. She asked for a princess-themed birthday party. But Bonilla and her husband — both raised Catholic — assumed she was confused and dressed her as a prince instead.
It took them a few years to understand their daughter and dismiss psychologists who said something was wrong with her or that they had done a poor parenting job.
“Comments can be ruthless and people have no idea what families like ours go through,” said Mauricio Caviedes, Amada’s father. “I hope education on this issue changes so people can understand.”
As they learned more about the trans community, their fight to modify Amada’s identity documents evolved into a broader cause. Bonilla and Caviedes became activists, bringing their kids with them to protests and conferences. They supported other LGBTQ+ causes such as same-sex marriage and founded an organization for families of trans children like their own.
“That became the only way we could fight the state,” Bonilla said. “We were 25 families with transgender children of different ages, the oldest being 12.”
Her family moved to Canada during the COVID-19 pandemic. And while she treasures how welcoming their new home has been for her daughter, she keeps advocating for LGBTQ+ rights in Ecuador.
Amada, now a strong student who dreams of becoming a nurse, was shaped by years of watching her parents support trans friends and community members struggling to access health care without discrimination. She has never appeared publicly on camera, but the visibility of her case feels like a lifelong legacy for Bonilla.
“People think the destiny of transgender people is to become sex workers or live in hiding,” Bonilla said. “But we want every parent to know that one day their child can become whatever they want to be.”
Idaho Gov. Brad Little (R) signed a severe anti-trans bill into law last Friday that will require child care providers, health care providers, and educational institutions to out trans kids to their parents if they express any desire to act in a way perceived as discordant with their sex assigned at birth.
The Pediatric Secretive Transitions Parental Rights Act, which will take effect in July, bans folks who care for minors “from facilitating a pediatric sex transition or social transition without informing and obtaining informed consent from a minor child’s parents or guardians.”
The bill aims to close a “loophole” in the state’s anti-trans laws, as cosponsor state Sen. Ben Toews (R) reportedly put it during the state Senate’s debate on the legislation. That loophole, Toews said, is the fact that the state’s gender-affirming care ban does not cover social transitions, which he referred to as “the process by which vulnerable children are led into the pipeline.”
The legislation defines social transition as “the process by which an individual goes from identifying with and living as a gender that corresponds to the individual’s sex to identifying with and living as a gender different from the individual’s sex and may involve social, legal, or physical changes, including adopting a name, pronouns, appearance, or dress that does not correspond to the individual’s sex.”
The covered entities, then, must notify a student’s parents within 72 hours if they request to be referred to using new pronouns or a different name than their legal name; if they ask to use facilities like bathrooms and locker rooms that don’t correspond with their sex assigned at birth; or if they ask to join a sports team that does not align with their birth sex.
Not doing so, the bill says, means “aiding and abetting” a child’s transition before parental consent is obtained. Parents will also be allowed to sue entities for violating the bill, and the attorney general will be authorized to seek civil penalties of up to $100,000.
Democrats argued against the bill for its vague language and the possibility that it would put children with unaccepting families in unsafe situations.
“When we write these bills, we write these statutes, we’re writing them for all families,” argued state Sen. James Ruchti (D), according to the Idaho Statesman. “And so when nurses, when doctors, when educators, tell us we need a little room to be able to handle these situations carefully… and being required to report this within 72 hours takes that out of our hands, and it means that we have to possibly go to a family… and tell them something that that family may not be in a great place to hear.”
State Sen. Melissa Wintrow (D) called the bill “one more that’s just overcontrolling overreach and just goes far beyond what’s necessary.”
“Life isn’t that black and white,” she said.
A lone Republican, state Sen. Jim Guthrie, spoke out against the bill, saying it will “force our teachers to be tattletales” and “put additional stress on teachers that are already stressed… already overworked, and more and more they have to deal with laws like this that are going to force them within 72 hours to make a judgment.”
After the legislature passed the bill, ACLU of Idaho spokesperson Rebecca De León called it an “example of unconstitutional, big government overreach into our private lives.”
“HB 822 threatens to undermine bedrock free speech protections for students, teachers, and health care professionals and is clearly unconstitutional,” she said. “Politicians who stand for small government and personal liberties should not regulate how people dress or express themselves.”
Jane Migliara Brigham, a writer for trans news publication The Needle, slammed the bill for turning doctors, teachers, and the like into “a kind of gender secret police.”
“The language is written such that there is no clear limit on what does not constitute social transition,” Brigham explained. “As a result, whether or not some behavior which is not listed here actually constitutes social transition will be in the eye of the beholder, or more accurately, in the eye of whoever is reporting the behavior to the child’s parents. This ambiguity leaves room for personal judgment, especially where that judgment is informed by anti-trans bigotry.”
Brigham questioned whether a boy wearing pink could count as evidence of a social transition and whether the legislation does not make clear where such an act would fall.
“Most casual observers cannot reliably tell the difference between a child who is trans, gay, gender non-conforming, or one who is simply socially awkward. As a result, what does and does not get reported to parents will, in all likelihood, be determined by bigotry and stereotypes, rather than any clear guidelines.”
At the end of March, Little also signed the nation’s most extreme bathroom ban. The law is the fourth in the U.S. to criminalize trans people’s use of bathrooms and other sex segregated spaces that don’t match the sex they were assigned at birth — similar laws have been enacted in Florida, Kansas, and Utah.
Guthrie was again the lone Republican against the bill. “If [a trans woman goes] in the bathroom of their biological sex, they’re going to upset a lot of people and freak people out,” he told the Associated Press. “If they go in the bathroom that is consistent with their looks — they are knowingly and willingly going into the bathroom — that is breaking the law.”
“They’re human beings,” he said, “just like us, and what are they supposed to do?”
As the Trump administration continues to curtail federal education protections – with particular cruelty aimed at LGBTQ+ students – lawmakers in Maryland have advanced a sweeping bill to protect marginalized students against discrimination in virtually all educational institutions in the state.
H.B. 649, named the Advancing Equal Educational Opportunities for All Students in Maryland Act, creates stronger enforcement mechanisms against “discrimination and retaliation” based on “race, color, national origin, ethnicity, ancestry, religion, sex, pregnancy, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, age, or marital status.”
The legislation allows students and families to report discrimination to either the state superintendent or the Maryland Commission on Civil Rights to investigate. It also gives students and families the right to sue an educational institution directly. It broadly defines an educational institution as any pre-K program, elementary school, secondary school, institution of postsecondary education, institution of higher education, or any other program that culminates in a certificate, diploma, or degree.
The bill also says that the state may withhold funding from a school in violation of the anti-discrimination protections and may also withhold funding if a school does not remedy the problem once it’s found.
Cleveland Horton II, the executive director of the Maryland Commission on Civil Rights, told Fox Baltimorethat the bill is “about making sure that when Maryland students experience discrimination, there is a clear, reliable, and timely place to turn at the state level.”
“This bill addresses a state-level enforcement gap in education discrimination, particularly in higher education. This bill is not intended to replace the Office of Civil Rights, but again, to provide a state-level parallel safeguard, and to reduce the over-reliance on the federal capacity.”
In written testimony in favor of the bill, the ACLU of Maryland emphasized that passage is “urgent.”
“When the current president was inaugurated in January 2026, there were over 270 pending complaints from Maryland residents through OCR [The federal Office for Civil Rights]. Many or perhaps most of these cases have already been dismissed without an investigation. With the dismantling of USDE and OCR, Maryland must fill the gap to ensure that the civil rights of all Maryland students are protected and upheld.”
The ACLU also pointed out that current Maryland anti-discrimination law does not cover students in higher education: “These students must rely on federal anti-discrimination laws. And with the aforementioned changes at the federal level, Maryland families have fewer practical options for filing complaints with the OCR.”
Religious institutions, on the other hand, have expressed concern.
“We are deeply concerned that H.B. 649 proposes that religious and faith-based schools would have their decisions judged by a State commission that will not respect or consider the sincerely held religious beliefs of the school or, accordingly, their constitutional rights,” the Maryland Catholic Conference said in written testimony, according to Fox Baltimore. “Allowing a commission that is unrelated to educational practices and procedures to literally police faith-based schools regarding broad terms of discrimination, potentially resulting in a cause of action which could result in compensatory or punitive monetary damages, is clearly unconstitutional and an overreach.”
Nevertheless, the bill passed the state House of Delegates 100-35 and is now being considered in the state Senate.
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