California Assembly Looks to Hand Children to Traffickers and Gender Activists

California’s radical Legislature is poised to destroy yet another child safeguard, the latest casualty in a long line of overturned protections.

AB 495, introduced by Assemblymember Celeste Rodriguez, purports to protect immigrant children from the threat of deportation. But its remedy defies logic.

The bill grants custody of a child to any unrelated adult who fills out an affidavit claiming a “mentoring” or other relationship with the minor.

The Biden administration took a similar approach, resulting in incalculable tragedy. Officials carelessly handed over countless unaccompanied children to suspicious individuals.

Up to hundreds of thousands of victims are now missing. AB 495 codifies a similar open invitation to traffickers. The bill also gives unprecedented power to gender activists in California’s schools and child protection systems.

AB 495 grants any adult who claims to know an unrelated minor the right to assert legal custody and medical decision-making over that minor. Unvetted but with an affidavit in hand, the applicant receives legal immunity and the right to authorize medical care. Combined with other recent laws granting the state emergency jurisdiction over minors seeking “gender-affirming care,” AB 495 thus ensures the child can receive “authorized” procedures. These could range from sex-rejecting “counseling” to chemical and surgical destruction of healthy sex organs.

All without the knowledge or consent of the child’s parents.

Under the Orwellian misnomer of the “Family Preparedness Plan Act,” the bill’s sponsors claim it protects the rights of parents and children. They claim it ensures the stability of caregiving arrangements. And yet, the bill defines a “relative” to whom it grants custody as including “blood, adoption, or affinity within the fifth degree of kinship.” In other words, almost any conceivable claim to a familial relationship.

The “nonrelative” category is defined as “an adult caregiver who has an established familial relationship with a relative of the child, or a familial or mentoring relationship with the child. Nonrelative extended family members may include, but are not limited to, teachers, medical professionals, clergy, neighbors, and family friends.”

Unvetted Access by Any Adult to Any Child

Again, a mere affidavit grants unrelated, unvetted adults authority over a child’s residency, custody, school enrollment, and medical care. The bill further guarantees that “a person who relies on this affidavit has no obligation to make any further inquiry or investigation.”

How very, very convenient for the “caregiver.”

For the child? Such carte blanche authority for a “caregiver” coupled with exemption from inquiry or investigation are a deadly guarantee of abuse.

Both the “relative” and “non-relative” categories are so broad that they remove any protections conferred by biological ties. A child living with an unrelated adult faces a higher risk of abuse. The risk of death from injury may be nearly 50 times that of a child living with biological parents.

AB4 495 hands any malicious adult the opportunity to prey on a child. In fact, the bill goes even further—in effect, it allows any adult access to any child, unaccompanied or not.

A History of Child Endangerment

Democrat state Sen. and LGBTQ+ activist Scott Wiener and Gov. Gavin Newsom have together championed bills that destroy child safeguarding. As detailed by investigative journalist Abigail Shrier, new laws lifted longstanding protections against child prostitution, removed criminal penalties for adults preying on children for sex, removed criminal penalties for knowingly infecting a sexual partner with HIV, and more.

In addition to AB 495, the California Legislature is also considering AB 727, which mandates free access to The Trevor Project. The Trevor Project is one of several activist groups that matches children without their parents’ knowledge with unrelated “mentoring” strangers in sexual affinity groups.

Accessing children invariably involves separating children from their parents. In 2022, California passed a law, SB 107, which grants the state emergency jurisdiction over children “unable to obtain gender affirming health care or gender affirming mental health care.” (In the last three years, fourteen other states and the District of Columbia passed similar provisions.) Such a law ruptures the long-established agreement between states to return runaways and kidnapping victims to their parents. If the child is in the state to receive sex-rejecting hormones or surgeries, he or she will not be returned to the parent.

Newsom then signed Wiener’s AB 665 into law in 2023, giving children as young as 12 the right to check themselves into residential shelters, without a court finding of abuse. There, they can receive “mental health” services and “gender-affirming care” without their parents’ knowledge or consent.

Schools are critical to accessing children, and secrecy is key to removing the protections of parents. Years ago, Newsom’s Department of Education guidelines adopted activist recommendations to keep gender transitions at school secret from parents.

Multiple California school districts passed policies in 2023 requiring schools to notify parents if a child “transitioned” at school. In response, Newsom’s attorney general sued Chino Valley Unified School District. In 2024, Newsom signed AB 1955, banning districts from requiring parental notification. Incredibly, California radicals mandated that schools deceive parents about their own children.

AB 495’s emphasis on “school-related (and other) medical care” is noteworthy. For years, California has been turning schools into centers dispensing medical care. Based on the “Whole School, Whole Community, Whole Child” model, these centers are designed to provide health care, social services, and other needs. Again, not only do they not require parental consent, but they also conceal from parents vital mental health issues affecting their child.

California Weaponizes Child Protective Services

California schools have repeatedly involved Child Protective Services to remove a child from parents who want to protect their child from gender medicalization. If a teacher, school counselor, or social worker reports the parent for not “affirming” the child’s claimed cross-sex identity, then the parent can lose the child.

California courts treat not “affirming” a child as abuse, and grounds for removal from loving parents who wish to protect the future of their children. One tragic case was Yaeli Martinez, who was taken from her parents and transitioned into state custody. She later spiraled into depression and took her life.

If AB 495 passes, an 18-year-old school intern or a 40-year-old queer club sponsor could appoint himself guardian of any child and approve medical care ranging from immunization to cross-sex hormones. Schools will become one-stop shops for transitioning children and removing them from the care and protection of their parents.

The Trump administration and various lawsuits are challenging California’s determination to separate children from their parents’ influence. But AB 495 will compound the years of harm already done.

Short of putting children up for sale, it is unclear how California Democrats could cause them greater harm than by passing AB 495.

Laura Hanford is a visiting fellow in The Heritage Foundation’s Richard and Helen DeVos Center for Life, Religion, and Family.

Reprinted with Permission from The Daily Signal – By Laura Hanford

The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of AMAC or AMAC Action.