Trump Said Schools 'Transition' Kids Without Parents' Knowledge. Here's What's Behind His Claims
President Trump returned to one of his favorite old chestnuts during Tuesday night’s State of the Union: transgender youth and their families.
He told the story of Sage Blair — a Virginia teen who sat in the audience with her mother — who sued her school board after teachers and others at school “sought to socially transition her” to a boy at school without her parents’ knowledge, leading to a “horrific” situation.
“It’s going on all over, numerous states, without even telling the parents,” Trump claimed. “Surely, we can all agree, no state should be allowed to rip children from their parents’ arms and transition them to a new gender against the parents’ will. We must ban it and we must ban it immediately.”
What he appeared to be referring to was the practice of young person opting to go through a “social transition. That means trying on for size, essentially, the idea of living “in line with their gender identity, rather than the gender assumed by their sex at birth, a process that typically involves changing a child’s pronouns, first name, hairstyle, and clothing,” according to a study of the practice in Pediatrics, which found that most (94%) still identified as trans at the end of a five-year period.
There were plenty of critics of Trump’s claims today, with an Advocate op-ed noting, “Anecdote became mandate in a matter of seconds, and a child’s vulnerability was transformed into justification for federal intervention.”
Trump was “weaponizing” the family’s story to push for a nationwide ban of transgender youth, LGBTQ Advocacy group Equality Virginia said in a statement.
Human Rights Campaign national press secretary Brandon Wolf called the move “just the latest attempt from Trump and his fellow MAGA politicians to wrestle away medical freedom from American families and distract from their complete failure to solve this country’s pressing issues.”
Others called Trump’s claims “lies,” “horrific, cruel, and deeply wrong,” and “anti-democratic, anti-equality, and anti-freedom.”
Here’s what was at the root of Trump’s comments.
The Shift Toward Banning Trans-Affirming Medical Care for Minors
While a relatively small population of U.S. teens identify as transgender — just over 3%, according to the most recent data — it can be hard to keep track of the constant flow of laws attacking them. That’s been especially true since 2021, when a record 150 such bills were introduced in nearly 40 states.
As a result, more than half, or 56%, of transgender youth between the ages of 13 and 17 — translating to about 382,800 young people — live in states that restrict their access to gender-affirming care, as well as bathrooms, sports, or using gender-affirming pronouns in schools.
In January of 2025, Trump issued an executive order aimed at prohibiting recognition of students’ gender identity at school, with possible legal actions against teachers and school staff who are supportive.
A total of 27 states have banned medical care for transgender youth, with the enforcement of some in flux due to a range of legal challenges. But in June of 2025, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in United States vs. Skrmetti that states that had passed such bans were legally permitted to do so, clearing a path for similar bills.
Why it Matters
Gender-affirming care refers to a range of services that can “affirm gender or treat gender dysphoria,” which is the psychological term for distress resulting from an incongruence between one’s sex and one’s gender identity. The services can include one or a mix of mental health counseling; hormone replacement therapy (HRT); puberty blockers for minors (banned in the U.K.); and gender-affirming surgeries (exceedingly rare for minors), which can range from facial feminization surgery and voice surgery to feminizing vaginoplasty or masculinizing chest or “top” surgery (a double mastectomy).
While such care is controversial, it’s long been considered a medically necessary, evidence-based system of care supported by major U.S. medical associations, including the American Academy of Pediatrics — although recently, both the American Society of Plastic Surgeons and the American Medical Association advised holding off on such surgeries until adulthood.
After Trump’s 2025 executive order targeting transgender students, a Williams Institute study found that, based on past data, the order would lead to poor mental health outcomes and higher risk of suicidality for trans youth.
The Shift Toward Forced Outings of Transgender Youth
Along with bills restricting the gender pronouns and bathroom/sports access of transgender minors, there’s been a growing number of laws explicitly require school staff to out transgender youth to their families, often without regard for whether doing so might put the child at risk of harm.
According to the Movement Advancement Project, which tracks such laws, 15 states now have forced outing requirements. Some apply to youth who have made a disclosure to school staff, others require the forced outing only if parents request such information, and others force the outing before a teen can begin to use a new name or pronoun.
California, meanwhile, has an opposite law — one that bans the forced outing of LGBTQ students at school.
Why It Matters
“Forced outing bills are not about parents’ rights: they are designed to harm trans students,” notes an American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) commentary.
A 2024 study out of Connecticut University, in fact, found that LGBTQ respondents who were outed (about 30%) to parents were more likely to experience elevated depressive symptoms and lower family support than those who were not outed.The findings, researchers noted, underscored the importance of youth “to have greater control over when they disclose their identities.”
Because both children and adults “have a constitutional right not to have intimate facts about their lives disclosed without their consent,” notes the ACLU piece. “That includes their sexual orientation, HIV status, or whether they are transgender. Children do not give up their constitutional rights by enrolling in public school. Students also have rights under federal law to keep certain information private, and not to have that information revealed without their consent.”
But forced outing bills, the story explains, “are designed to do exactly that: reveal private information about trans students, regardless of whether the student consents or whether they may suffer negative or harmful consequences at school or at home from that disclosure.”