CPRC Private Briefing Recap · October 9, 2026
Yaeli Martinez Child Protection Act
A girl named Yaeli Martinez was taken from her mother by California’s child-welfare system because her mother would not treat her as a boy. In state care she was given testosterone. She died by suicide at 19.
Last week Senator Eric Schmitt and Congresswoman Mary Miller introduced a bill in her name. Congresswoman Sheri Biggs is co-sponsoring it in the House.
On October 9, both members joined a 20-minute private briefing with CPRC Executive Director Craig Hanson and with Joseph & Arlene Kutzko, whose daughter is in Massachusetts state custody. A judge has temporarily blocked high-dose testosterone. The next hearing is October 29.
On the call
What the members said
Congresswoman Mary Miller
Congresswoman Miller said her office has seen repeated cases of child-welfare overreach on this issue, and that she got into the fight because government is supposed to serve families, not undo them. She is especially concerned that federal dollars are fueling the collapse of parental rights. She will work with House leadership to move the bill.
Congresswoman Sheri Biggs
Congresswoman Biggs called parental rights the most significant civil rights issue of our time. She said child-welfare agencies and schools should return to their actual jobs: protecting children and educating them.
Parental rights are the most significant civil rights issue of our time. — Rep. Sheri Biggs
The bill
What the bill does
Three things, in plain English:
- It says that refusing to treat a child as the opposite sex is not abuse.
- It puts federal child-welfare funding at risk for any state that uses those dollars to punish a parent for affirming a child’s sex.
- It gives parents a private right of action when a covered agency overrides that right.
The bill does not rewrite medical-malpractice law. It addresses one question: whether the state may treat a parent as abusive for raising a boy as a boy or a girl as a girl.
Why it matters
How it breaks the current playbook
The pattern in these cases is the same.
- 1 A school socially transitions a child without the parents.
- 2 The parents refuse to go along.
- 3 Someone at the school calls child welfare.
- 4 The agency treats that refusal as abuse or neglect and takes the child.
- 5 Once the child is in state care, the hormones follow.
This bill attacks that sequence at the point where it becomes power. A state that takes federal child-welfare money could no longer call it abuse to raise a boy as a boy or a girl as a girl. It could no longer use those dollars to investigate, remove, or terminate a fit parent for that reason. And it could no longer use those dollars to put a child in state care on cross-sex hormones, or to grab a child who runs to another state for that purpose.
Take away the removal, and the school’s quiet transition has nowhere to go.
The family
What Joe & Arlene Kutzko said
Joe & Arlene said that if this law had been in place, the state could not have taken their daughter.
Then Joe read from the Gospel of Luke — the account of the girl everyone said was dead, and of Jesus telling them she was only sleeping, and telling her to rise.
He closed his Bible, weeping, and pleaded:
“Wake up, Sophie. Please wake up.”
No one on the call needed that translated.
Act now
Two ways to help now
The Family
Help the Kutzkos
The Kutzkos’ legal bills are already past $150,000 and are expected to rise to $250,000 or more. Their GiveSendGo is for the family.
Give on GiveSendGoThe Next Family
Give to CPRC
Gifts to CPRC staff the lawyers, for this family and the next. Tax-deductible and DAF-eligible.
- Payable to:
- Child & Parental Rights Campaign, Inc.
- EIN:
- 83-4560997
- Memo:
- Parental Custody Defense Fund
- Mail:
- 5425 Peachtree Pkwy, Ste 110, Peachtree Corners, GA 30092
What’s coming
A short film with the Kutzkos
A short film with the Kutzkos is being shot next week. It will tell their story and explain what this bill would do. We’ll send it to you as soon as it’s complete so that you can help spread the word.
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