California Family Council vs. transgender people

Groups Reviewed August 29, 2026 3 min read

The California Family Council is a Christian conservative advocacy organization based in Sacramento that lobbies on state-level policy issues in California. Its most visible recent activism has centered on transgender-related policy around athletes, “parental rights,” and state-mandated LGBTQ+ cultural-competency training for teachers.

CFC frames this work as “advancing God’s design for life, family, and liberty in California’s church, capitol, and culture.”

Background

California Family Council (CFC) descends from the broader US “family policy council” movement that began in the 1980s. Focus on the Family encouraged the creation of affiliated state-level organizations to advance socially conservative policy at the statehouse level, mirroring national groups like the Family Research Council.

CFC rose to prominence in California’s fight over marriage equality in the 2000s. Its then-executive director, Ron Prentice, was a central figure in the campaign for Proposition 22, the 2000 ballot measure defining marriage as between a man and a woman, which passed with 61% support.

After courts struck down Proposition 22 in 2008, Prentice helped organize Proposition 22 Legal Defense and Education Fund, also called the Protect Marriage Coalition (ProtectMarriage.com). That group successfully campaigned for Proposition 8, the state constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage passed by voters in November 2008. That coalition included:

Family Research Council
Focus on the Family
California Family Alliance
Catholics for ProtectMarriage.com
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (distributed lawn signs)

Proposition 8 was invalidated in federal court in 2010, upheld on appeal in 2012, and dismissed by the US Supreme Court in 2013. California voters formally repealed the underlying constitutional language via Proposition 3 in 2024.

CFC is affiliated with California Family Alliance, which describes itself as “Christians engaging as persistent lights in the darkness of California’s culture and politics by electing and supporting leaders who will protect Christian faith, culture, and values in the public square.” California Family Alliance publishes CA Legislator Score Cards: “Each legislator received a Biblical Values Score. […] The higher the score, the more closely the legislator’s votes are aligned with biblical values.”

Anti-trans activism

Following losses surrounding marriage equality, CFC began increasingly focusing on anti-transgender policy activism. CFC has focused on the following areas:

CFC has been one of the most vocal organizations pushing to bar transgender athletes from female sports categories in California:

resources for student athletes who want to file lawsuits against school districts and the California Interscholastic Federation (CIF)
rallies and press conferences urging CIF to remove transgender athletes’ names from records and rescind medals and awards they received.
In 2025 backed Assembly Bill 89 and a companion bill by Assemblymember Bill Essayli aimed at reestablishing biological sex as the standard for participation in K-12 sex-segregated sports and facilities.

CFC has also been involved in the “parental rights” movement:

CFC has backed bills like “Yaeli’s Law,” which would prohibit California’s Child Protective Services from using a parent’s refusal to affirm a child’s transgender identity as justification for removing children from their homes.
CFC has backed companion legislation intended to ensure parents can’t be accused of child abuse or neglect for refusing to consent to puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, or surgery for their child.

CFC has opposed school-based programs it views as promoting “gender ideology,” including California’s PRISM training for teachers, mandatory pronoun policies at UC campuses, and transgender-care training mandates for healthcare workers.

CFC has publicized cases of employees seeking religious accommodations to avoid affirming gender-identity language in workplace policy, framing it as compelled speech.