The Federal Communications Commission has issued a public notice asking whether the television ratings system should be modified to add warning labels specifically for transgender and gender non-binary content in children's programming. The notice treats the existence of transgender people in children's television as a hazard equivalent to violence and sexual content, something parents must be warned about before their children are exposed to it.

That is not a consumer protection measure. It is a government agency using its regulatory authority to tell American families that transgender people are dangerous.

The FCC's own data demolishes the premise of this proposal. The most recent annual report on the existing ratings system found only 11 pieces of public correspondence relevant to the board's work and just two instances where a rating actually needed to be changed. The lone Democratic FCC commissioner, Anna Gomez, called the notice a solution in search of a problem and noted that Americans are far more concerned about broadband affordability and media consolidation than whether there are enough gender identity warnings on their television screens. She is right. The FCC exists to serve consumers. It does not exist to wage culture war on behalf of an administration that has made the targeting of transgender people a central political priority.

The harm of this proposal extends beyond regulatory overreach. Warning labels carry meaning. When the government proposes to label transgender content as something requiring parental warning, it sends a direct and unmistakable message to every transgender and gender non-binary child watching television that their existence is a hazard. That their identity is something adults need to be protected from seeing. That who they are belongs in the same category as graphic violence and adult sexual content. The psychological harm of that message to LGBTQ+ youth, who already face disproportionate rates of depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation, is not theoretical. It is documented and it is serious.

The First Amendment protects speech and expression from government censorship and stigmatization. Using the FCC's regulatory authority to require warning labels on content simply because it depicts transgender people is not content-neutral regulation. It is the government placing a scarlet letter on a specific group of people and their representation in media. Courts have consistently held that the government cannot use regulatory power to disadvantage speech based on its viewpoint. Labeling transgender content as a parental warning while placing no equivalent label on cisgender content is viewpoint discrimination by definition.

The FCC is accepting public comments on this proposal until May 22. That deadline is the immediate lever available to every American who believes the government should not use federal regulatory power to stigmatize LGBTQ+ people on television.

Sign this petition to demand the FCC withdraw its notice proposing warning labels for transgender and gender non-binary television content, oppose any modification to the TV ratings system that treats LGBTQ+ identities as hazardous content equivalent to violence or sexual material, and call on Congress to investigate whether the FCC is using its regulatory authority to advance culture war politics in violation of the First Amendment.