Chloe Cole: Corporate Healthcare Plans Shouldn’t Subsidize Harming Kids

The evidence doesn’t support inflicting gender transition procedures on minors—the experimental drug regimens, the irreversible surgeries, the patients who grew up and filed lawsuits—and twenty-seven states have arrived at the same verdict: These procedures have no place in a child’s medical care.

Corporations, as it turns out, have been a bit slower to recognize this truth.

That’s no longer an excuse—if it ever was. American Express, IBM, and Merck are among the major companies that still hold perfect or near-perfect scores on the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index, a rating that requires covering puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and body-altering surgeries for minor dependents. In other words, an outside activist organization has been shaping their benefits policy for children.

Chloe Cole knows what that policy costs. She was twelve when doctors began permanently altering her body with drugs. By fifteen, doctors removed her healthy breasts. And recently, she spoke at Home Depot’s shareholder meeting and told the board exactly what their healthcare plan appears to be paying for.

Home Depot got the message from Chloe directly

Chloe Cole didn’t send a letter. She didn’t hire a lobbyist. She spoke the truth.

This past May, the detransitioner and patient advocate spoke directly to Home Depot’s board and shareholders—not as a policy argument, but as someone who carries the consequences of these procedures in her body every single day.

“Before I was old enough to vote, marry, or drive, I was put on puberty blockers and testosterone,” Chloe recalled.

She was twelve when doctors began permanently altering her body with drugs. By fifteen, doctors removed her healthy breasts. To get them to consent, her parents were asked the all-too-common question: Do you want a dead daughter or a living son?. However, there is no evidence that withholding these interventions causes suicide. In fact, roughly 90 percent of kids allowed to work their way through puberty do so successfully; whereas over 90 percent of kids who are socially transitioned become lifelong medical patients and never grow comfortable with their bodies. Simply put, the suicide lie is just that—a lie. And it tragically has very real victims.

The threat used to override her family’s judgment wasn’t medicine. It was coercion.

Chloe didn’t spare the board that history. She came with a specific concern that every person in the meeting was going to have to sit with.

“Home Depot appears to be complicit in this failure,” she said. “Shareholders deserve to know whether this company is subsidizing, endorsing, or being pressured into supporting medical interventions that many doctors, parents, and victims now recognize as dangerous…”

She named it directly: based on publicly available HRC data, Home Depot’s healthcare plan appears to cover dangerous transition drugs and surgeries for covered dependents—including children. “The landscape is shifting,” she told shareholders.

Days before Chloe spoke in that meeting, the Department of Justice announced a landmark resolution against Texas Children’s Hospital—the first major action in its ongoing national investigation into pediatric gender transition procedures. TCH agreed to pay over $10 million, permanently end these procedures on minors, and establish the country’s first detransition clinic.

Chloe described the barbaric procedures she was subjected to—and that clinics like TCH enabled—as “abuse, disguised as compassion, by adults who I trusted.” 

“And doctors continue to push thousands of children into that failure every year.”

Chloe is currently suing Kaiser Permanente. She, and others like her. keep showing up—at shareholder meetings, in legislative chambers, wherever they need to stand—until the institutions still covering these dangerous procedures are made to answer for it.

ADF is holding corporations accountable

A high score on the Human Rights Campaign‘s Corporate Equality Index isn’t what it sounds like. It’s a policy commitment, and it’s one with real consequences for children.

As the Daily Signal notes, to earn a 100 on the CEI, companies must cover gender transition interventions for employee dependents. The index specifies no age floor. That means puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries for minor children are line items in the healthcare plans of hundreds of American corporations—not because their boards evaluated the evidence and chose this, but because an outside activist organization made it the price of a good rating.

And that’s why ADF is committed to fighting back against these harmful corporate healthcare plans. The strategy is straightforward: platform detransitioners at the annual shareholder meetings of companies still holding high CEI scores, and force boards to answer—publicly, on the record—whether they’ve actually evaluated the legal, ethical, and financial exposure of maintaining that coverage.

During this past year, our clients and we spoke with IBM, American Express, and Home Depot. Detransitioner Camille Kiefel spoke at Merck’s annual meeting on May 26. And according to the Daily Wire, Walmart—the largest private employer in the country—updated its policy to say that gender reassignment surgeries are not medically necessary for minors. The question for other corporations is whether they act now or continue to fund procedures that expose them to legal and financial risk.

The legal and financial risks are real and growing

The women showing up at these shareholder meetings aren’t just telling their stories. They’re delivering a warning that corporate boards can no longer afford to ignore.

At least 25 detransitioners have filed lawsuits since 2022.

Camille Kiefel

Camille Kiefel had experienced trauma around becoming a woman—something she tried to manage on her own by dressing in a more masculine way, a coping mechanism that didn’t work. When she eventually turned to medical providers, she was looking for someone to help her understand why she felt the way she did. What she got instead was a fast track to irreversible surgeries and an experimental drug regimen. Her mental health history was never meaningfully reviewed. Her trauma around womanhood was never explored. She filed a lawsuit against her mental health providers that ultimately reached a resolution.

On May 26, she stood before Merck’s shareholders and asked a simple question: Has this company evaluated the legal, ethical, and reputational exposure of maintaining benefits coverage that funds exactly this kind of “care” for children?

Soren Aldaco

Soren Aldaco was between the ages of 17 and 19 when her mother’s employer-sponsored plan helped cover cross-sex hormones and the double mastectomy that removed Soren’s healthy breasts. Her path to that operating table didn’t begin with confusion regarding her sex. It began with trauma. At 11, she was sexually groomed online by adult strangers. That experience made her hate her body, particularly the parts that had been violated. When she finally brought that history to medical professionals, not one of them asked why a teenage girl might want to erase the most visible markers of her womanhood. The therapist she had opened up to about her sexual abuse didn’t explore that disclosure. She wrote a letter to the surgeons instead.

After the surgery, Soren nearly died as blood pooled in her chest and abdomen. The surgeons who had billed tens of thousands of dollars to her mother’s corporate healthcare plan went silent. Her case is now before the Texas Supreme Court.

She is asking American Express—whose benefits plan was a direct link in her chain—whether it has evaluated the actual cost of its corporate healthcare coverage.

Fox Varian

In January 2026, Fox Varian became the first detransitioner case to reach a jury verdict, leading to $2 million awarded, with both the psychologist and surgeon found liable for failing to meet the standard of care.

More of these lawsuits continue to be filed.

Many corporations are lagging behind

The medical and legal ground beneath these benefits decisions has shifted..

• The Supreme Court, in United States v. Skrmetti, upheld Tennessee’s law protecting minors from harmful and life-altering drugs and surgeries. Twenty-seven states have protections on the books.
• The American Society of Plastic Surgeons now recommends delaying sex-related surgeries until at least age 19.
• The American Medical Association has affirmed that surgical interventions in minors should generally be deferred until adulthood.
• Six-plus countries—including England, Sweden, and Finland — have pulled back from these harmful drugs and procedures for minors after conducting systematic evidence reviews.

Walmart has read the room. Home Depot, American Express, Merck, and IBM have not. Each of those companies appears to cover puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries for minor dependents based on their HRC Corporate Equality Index scores.

Gender ideology doesn’t belong in corporate healthcare

Chloe Cole was twelve years old when the adults and institutions around her failed to ask the right questions. She has spent the years since making sure the right people are asking them now. That’s what she did at Home Depot’s shareholder meeting. That’s what Soren did at American Express. That’s what Camille did at Merck. One by one, the people who were lied to about their bodies and scarred for life are showing up in the rooms where those policies are being made, making it impossible for boards to claim they didn’t know.

And now these boards have been notified. The only question left is whether they act on it.