The Ongoing Legal Battles in Teen Transgender Cases

Alexandra Lyaschenko hasn’t spoken with her teenage daughter in nearly two years.

In June 2024, she had been taking her daughter to see a therapist for her struggles with borderline personality disorder, hyperactivity, and trauma from bullying at school.

At first, Lyaschenko thought the therapist might be able to help with those issues.

Instead, according to Lyaschenko, that same therapist accompanied Child Protective Services on June 3 to take her daughter away from their home in Mt. Shasta, California.

“She left barefoot, and my husband did the talking, because I developed an immediate physical reaction,” Lyashcenko told The Epoch Times.

“I grabbed my son. It was the scariest day of my life.”

Her daughter was then taken to what Lyaschenko described as a gender clinic in Chico. “After that, the hell started,” Lyaschenko said.

Fearing the state would try to take her son following what she described as accusations of abuse by her daughter, Lyaschenko fled across the country.

Several other parents in a situation similar to Lyaschenko’s were too afraid to speak to The Epoch Times, even under anonymity.

Their cases are ongoing, and they fear losing custody of their children by violating court gag orders.

The Legislative Battle

Accounts such as Lyaschenko’s are surfacing in legal battles across the nation, pitting states against parents and parents against courts or each other.

On April 2, Lyaschenko testified in New Hampshire, where the legislature was considering a bill that would ban Child Protective Services from removing minors from parental custody solely because they wouldn’t support so-called gender transitions.

New Hampshire is not the only state considering such laws. A similar bill is working its way through the Ohio Legislature, after reports that Cuyahoga County was implementing a program tracking the sexual and gender identity of children as young as 5.

The issue may also come before the Supreme Court.

In February, International Partners for Ethical Care filed a petition challenging Washington statutes that allow the state to separate runaways from their parents and commence gender treatments.

Washington’s laws required a youth shelter to notify parents or guardians, unless there was a compelling reason not to.

In 2023, the state amended the law to say “compelling reasons include when a minor is seeking or receiving protected health care services,” and “protected health care services means gender-affirming treatment and reproductive health care services that are lawful in the state of Washington.”

Martha Shoultz, co-founder of Partners for Ethical Care, said she was confident that if the Supreme Court took up the case, her organization would prevail.

“How can you think there’s not really an imminent danger to the kids, if somebody can keep your children after they run away, even put them on medicine … with possibly serious, long-term consequences?” she told The Epoch Times.

She added that, as with many issues surrounding gender identity, these runaways were treated differently than in other circumstances.

“Child safeguarding goes out the window if transition is involved, for some reason. … It’s like, basically, they’re throwing these confused kids to the wolves,” she said, expressing her personal view of how such policies affect minors.

On April 19, the organization hosted an event highlighting the stories of “detransitioners,” who underwent gender procedures but later experienced regret.

Sarah Parshall Perry, vice president at Defending Education, said that in her view, Washington’s law effectively allows children to run away from their home state to seek gender treatment.

“Never before have we seen a state try to use an attempt to shield lawful law enforcement efforts on the basis of trying to transition these children against parental will,” she told The Epoch Times.

“Not only is it a violation of constitutional principles, both on the recognition of interstate powers, one to another, and not only a violation of a constitutional parental right, it also brings up potential criminal charges.”

That’s because “sanctuary laws” such as Washington’s rub against laws in other states that require parental notification for certain medical procedures, Perry said.

Parent Versus Parent

In many cases, according to parents and their advocates, it’s not the state that strips parents of custody after they refuse to affirm—it’s one of the parents, usually following a separation or divorce.

Pat Catalano told The Epoch Times the experience of being the “targeted parent” was like “screaming in the woods, ‘somebody help,’ but nobody will listen to you.”

Ryan Clarke said both of his daughters struggled with gender issues. The youngest decided she was a boy and the oldest said she was nonbinary, he said.

According to Clarke, his ex-wife cut him out of medical decisions, and the younger girl was given puberty blockers at 11. He also said both daughters were hospitalized for suicidal ideation, but that he was not made aware until after the fact.

An attorney representing his former partner declined to comment on the specifics of the case, but said, “States can give broader rights to people than the baseline protections that are in our Constitution.”

Even when the gender dysphoria appears to subside, according to these families, the intra-family conflict can make it hard for parent and child to reconcile.

In 2019, Jeanette Cooper said she had enjoyed almost total custody of her young daughter for several years; the child would spend one night a week with her ex-husband.

So Cooper said she was baffled when, upon going to pick up her child, the father refused to return custody. The next morning, she said she received an email from her daughter saying she identified as transgender, felt “unsafe” around Cooper, and that she would live with her dad to give her mother “time to process this.”

Cooper said she never regained custody, even after a protracted, expensive legal battle. She told The Epoch Times that her daughter, now an adult, no longer appears to identify as transgender.

Even in photos from high school, Cooper said, her daughter was “ wearing crop tops, and [looked] like a beautiful adolescent girl.”

On April 19, Cooper, who is a co-founder of Parents for Ethical Care, showed The Epoch Times what she said was an Instagram photo of her daughter in a wedding dress. She said she had suspected the young woman had married, but was unsure.

Who Decides?

Ohio state Rep. Ismail Mohamed questioned the efficacy of the state’s proposed bill, saying it may do more harm than good because it limits courts’ discretion to protect children.

“The goal is what’s in the best interest of the child, and not necessarily what is the political ideology of the parent,” he said during a hearing on March 25.

“What they believe in is ultimately up to the child, and there’s evidence that children are unfortunately committing suicide, transgender kids that are being targeted.”

Proponents of gender-based medical interventions in minors often say the procedures are necessary to alleviate mental distress and prevent suicide.

But a recent study published in Finland found that youth who received so-called affirming care often experienced a higher rate of psychological problems afterward, according to the researchers.

Vernadette Broyles, president and chief counsel of Child and Parental Rights Campaign, told The Epoch Times that in her view, parents have to guard against psychological manipulation at the hands of their own children.

Adults “have got to stop allowing mentally distressed, underdeveloped minors run the show,” she said, characterizing what she sees as a broader pattern in these disputes.

“[Adults’] authority needs to be affirmed,” along with their right to “provide their child whatever mental health assistance they need in order for this child to understand why they are distressed with their bodies.”

Broyles said she has assisted parents in custody battles in over a dozen cases, and is working on upcoming legislation that she said would strip funding from states that investigate and remove children from parents who decline to affirm their child’s stated gender identity.

Correction: A previous version of this story misstated Sarah Parshall Perry’s title and association. The Epoch Times regrets the error.