Newsom orders Trevor Project hotline added to student ID cards

Democrat California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed AB 727, a new state law that forces schools to print the Trevor Project’s LGBTQ youth hotline on student identification cards.

The move builds on a prior requirement that student IDs include a suicide-prevention number, but AB 727 explicitly singles out the Trevor Project and reaches students in public and private schools as young as middle school.

Conservative parents and education advocates warn this hands a politically active group direct access to minors and undermines parental oversight.

The law arrived after the Trump administration ended a federal subcontract that had routed some youth crisis calls to LGBTQ-focused groups, including the Trevor Project.

Parents Defending Education says the Project’s online chat lets children discuss gender and sexuality with unrelated adults and includes a quick-exit feature that clears browser history to hide conversations from parents.

TrevorSpace, the Project’s social chat for 13- to 24-year-olds, has been shown in investigative reports to contain sexually explicit conversations and troubling advice aimed at vulnerable minors.

The organization also opposes parental notification policies for name or pronoun changes at school, supports allowing men in women’s bathrooms and locker rooms, and promotes puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones as “medically necessary” for transgender-identifying youth.

Assemblyman Mark González, who introduced the bill, indicated it was brought forward as a direct response to the Trump administration’s move.

“When Donald Trump and the federal government turn their backs on LGBTQ+ youth, California steps up,” González said in a statement. “With the signing of AB 727, we’re sending a clear message: our LGBTQ+ youth are seen, valued, and never alone. AB 727 is not just a piece of legislation; it is a lifeline for our queer youth.”

Earlier this year, Newsom appeared to moderate his stances on transgender youth, including by calling men competing in women’s sports ‘deeply unfair’ and expressing hesitancy about medically transitioning children.

Since then, California’s Department of Education has refused to comply with federal demands to bar men from women’s sports and single-sex spaces, and the state has doubled down on making resources for LGBTQ youth widely available.

“If MAGA is more upset about a crisis hotline saving LGBTQ kids than about those kids dying by suicide, I think we’ve found the real problem — and it’s not the bill,” a spokesperson for Newsom told the Daily Caller News Foundation in defense of the law.

Districts now face the practical task of updating ID templates and printing new cards, a cost that will fall to already stretched school budgets.

Parents say quick-exit buttons and anonymous chats create an environment where children can hide conversations from family, raising questions about oversight and safety.

Critics also argue that mandating the contact information for a politically engaged advocacy group blurs the line between support services and advocacy, and sidesteps parental input on who serves as a resource for their children.

Supporters counter that named, visible hotlines can save lives by connecting at-risk youth to immediate help and that a general 988 referral may not always meet the needs of LGBTQ kids.

Neither González nor the Trevor Project responded to requests for additional comment.