Project 2025 Tracker / What’s done, what’s next

14. Department of Health and Human Services · Notable

End CDC collection of gender identity data

Partially done

456 14. Department of Health and Human Services

“The CDC should immediately end its collection of data on gender identity, which legitimizes the unscientific notion that men can become women (and vice versa) and encourages the phenomenon of ever-multiplying subjective identities.”

What has happened

  1. Partially done

    A gender-identity item was dropped from a CDC survey inside the window. The 2024 and 2025 National Health Interview Survey questionnaires were read in full and diffed on 2026-09-03. The 2024 instrument carries a section headed "GNI: Gender Identity" with two variables — `GENDER_A` ("Do you currently describe yourself as male, female, transgender, nonbinary, or another gender?", with responses including Transgender, Nonbinary and Another gender) and `GENDSPEC_A` ("What term do you use to describe your gender?"). **The 2025 instrument has no GNI section at all**: the string "GNI" appears zero times against six in 2024, and both variables are gone. The removal is visible a third way, in the respondent-facing introduction to the demographics block: 2024's `ORNINTRO_A` reads "…including sexual orientation, gender identity, income, employment, and veteran status"; 2025's reads "…including sexual orientation, income, employment, and veteran status". **Sexual orientation was kept** — `ORIENT_A` remains in 2025, marked Annual Core. That is a piece of "end its collection of data on gender identity" delivered, by a different instrument than the ask names, so `partial` and not `done`: **YRBS still asks it.** The 2025 YRBS national high-school questionnaire, read on 2026-09-03, retains Q68 — "Some people describe themselves as transgender when their sex at birth does not match the way they think or feel about their gender. Are you transgender?" — under the heading "The next 2 questions ask about sexual and gender identity", on a form carrying OMB No. 0920-0493. **Two caveats stated plainly.** `GENDER_A` was labeled "Emerging Content" in 2024 and NHIS emerging content rotates out by design after a year or two, while `ORIENT_A` is Annual Core and did not rotate; no CDC or NCHS statement gives a reason for the removal, so the record does not support a causal link to EO 14168 and none is asserted here — the ask is about the collection ceasing, not about the motive. And the date: 2025-06-24 is the date NCHS's own documentation page states the 2025 instrument was published, which is when it became public. The alternatives were 2026-08-27 (the page's later "Updated" stamp, when the 2025 data files were released) and 2025-01-01 (when fielding began).

  2. Attempted

    Executive Order 14168 directs every agency to "remove all statements, policies, regulations, forms, communications, or other internal and external messages that promote or otherwise inculcate gender ideology" and to use "sex" rather than "gender" in agency forms - a government-wide directive that reaches CDC's data collection instruments but names none of them. OPM's implementing memorandum of 2025-01-29 set a 2025-01-31 deadline. No allowlisted document records CDC ceasing to collect gender identity data in any survey; what is documented is the removal of already-published webpages and datasets, which a court then ordered restored.

Research log

What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence

Research notes

  • Doctors for America v. Office of Personnel Management, No. 25-322 (D.D.C.), memorandum opinion of 2025-02-11 granting a temporary restraining order (https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/10331066/doctors-for-america-v-office-of-personnel-management/; read at https://ecf.dcd.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/show_public_doc?2025cv0322-12) records that “in response to OPM’s memorandum” CDC and FDA “removed numerous webpages and datasets”, and required their restoration. That is dissemination, not collection, and it was undone, so it is context rather than progress on this ask.
  • FDA’s own REMS index carries a notice dated 2025-05-20 that HHS “modified this webpage pursuant to Executive Order 14168” and then temporarily restored it - the same pattern, on a different HHS site.
  • The four questionnaires were read on 2026-09-03. NHIS and YRBS are in the Status note. The other two produce no finding either way, and it matters that the note says so:
    • BRFSS — the optional-module list for 2024 still carries a “Sexual Orientation” module (34 states and territories in 2024, 37 in 2023, same label). But the BRFSS questionnaire index publishes English questionnaire PDFs only through 2023, its module-category pages stop at 2024, and the 2025 module-category page does not exist. For 2025 and 2026 the current instrument is simply not public, so no finding either way is available.
    • PRAMS — Phase 9 (2023–present) is still the current questionnaire and its Core Mail Questionnaire contains no gender-identity item; the only SOGI-adjacent item is Core 53h, “My sexual orientation”, as one of fourteen possible reasons for experiencing discrimination. The PDF’s internal metadata shows CreationDate 2023-05-30 and ModDate 2025-03-06 — a revision was made inside the window and its content is not recoverable from an allowlisted source, since no prior copy is published and the Internet Archive is off the allowlist. Recorded as an open question, not as a finding.
  • The YRBS questionnaire PDF was read in full, but it is not cited as Evidence: its internal ModDate is 2024-12-03, before the window, and cdc.gov would not tell us when the file was last changed on its server, so that date could not be measured. The YRBS fact therefore stands in the note as an observation, which is all the partial needs it to be.
Action
eliminate
Object
CDC collection of gender identity data
ID
1223