<p class="p1">Millions of American families trust Home Depot with their home improvement projects. Recently, I joined the company’s shareholder meeting to ask whether the public should trust Home Depot with their children.</p>
<p class="p1">I am a detransitioner. Between the ages of 12 and 16, I was placed on puberty blockers and testosterone, and at 15, surgeons removed my breasts. I carry those consequences in my body every single day. And when I spoke to Home Depot&#8217;s board and shareholders, I told them something that every person in that room needed to hear: your company&#8217;s healthcare plan appears to cover these same interventions for covered dependents — including children. Shareholders deserve to know that. Families deserve better.</p>
<p class="p1">This is not a political abstraction for me. I know exactly what these procedures take from a child, because they took it from me.</p>
<p class="p1">When my parents first sought help for what I was experiencing as a young teenager, they believed they would find counseling, support, and time. Instead, they were handed one option — and a threat. Consent to these interventions, they were told, or your daughter will probably die. The ACLU&#8217;s own top attorney has since acknowledged to the Supreme Court that there is no evidence that denying these interventions causes suicide. The claim used to pressure my family, and thousands of families like mine, was not medicine. It was a lie.</p>
<p class="p1">Days before I raised this question at Home Depot’s shareholder meeting, the Department of Justice (DOJ) made something clear to the entire country: this conduct is also fraud.</p>
<p class="p1">The DOJ announced a landmark resolution against Texas Children&#8217;s Hospital (TCH) — the first action in its ongoing national investigation into pediatric gender transition procedures. TCH has agreed to pay over $10 million in damages and civil penalties, permanently end these procedures on children, and — perhaps most significantly — fund the first-ever clinic in this country dedicated to restorative care for detransitioners.</p>
<p class="p1">This is a turning point in our culture. Texas will be home to the first clinic that helps victims of these barbaric procedures get back to normalcy.</p>
<p class="p1">That clinic matters to me personally. The medical interventions I received did not resolve my pain. They replaced it with permanent damage and stripped me of the final years of my childhood. I am currently suing Kaiser Permanente — the healthcare system that profited from my confusion — because institutions that cause this harm should be held accountable. The DOJ has now signaled that the federal government agrees, and that every provider and institution still funding these procedures should take that seriously.</p>
<p class="p1">Home Depot should take it seriously, too.</p>
<p class="p1">Based on publicly available information from the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), Home Depot still holds a perfect score on the HRC&#8217;s Corporate Equality Index — a score earned in part by providing employee insurance coverage for puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries for covered dependents, including children.</p>
<p class="p1">Industry leaders from Walmart to Lowe&#8217;s, Ford, and Harley-Davidson have already stepped back from covering these practices. The medical authorities in more than six countries, including our own Department of Health and Human Services, have backed away as both data and personal testimony have made the consequences undeniable.</p>
<p class="p1">Over half the states across the country — including Georgia, where Home Depot is headquartered — have moved to protect minors from these procedures. The Supreme Court has upheld states’ right to protect children in this way.</p>
<p class="p1">The landscape has shifted. The question now is whether Home Depot shifts with it or waits for a federal investigation to make that decision for them.</p>
<p class="p1">Former patients like me are speaking out and winning in court. Parents are organizing and showing up. The DOJ is investigating. And I will keep standing in shareholder meetings, legislative chambers, and wherever else I need to stand, until every institution that has chosen ratings and outside pressure over the protection of children is made to answer for it.</p>
<p class="p1">No child should need a lawsuit, a congressional hearing, or a federal fraud investigation to be protected from procedures that rob them of their bodies and their futures. Home Depot does not have to become part of what happened to me. But right now, it is — and the window to change that is narrowing.</p>
<p class="p1">Children deserve compassion, counseling, and time to grow up. They deserve to inherit their bodies intact.</p>
<p class="p1">And the institutions still standing in the way of that deserve to know: we are not going away.</p>
<p class="p1">***</p>
<p class="p1"><i>Chloe Cole is a detransitioner, patient advocate, and plaintiff in ongoing litigation against Kaiser Permanente. She recently called on Home Depot to end its apparent coverage of gender transition interventions for minors.</i></p>

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Home Depot’s Shareholders Need To Know What Their Benefits Package Did To Kids Like Me

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To The LA Times: Get A Life, I Have Lives To Save

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Home Depot’s Shareholders Need To Know What Their Benefits Package Did To Kids Like Me