The state of California is suing a local school district over its newly enacted policy of informing parents when their children change their “gender identity” at school.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta, a Democrat, announced Monday that he was filing a lawsuit against the Chino Valley Unified School District (CVUSD) for its “forced outing policy.”
“Every student has the right to learn and thrive in a school environment that promotes safety, privacy, and inclusivity — regardless of their gender identity,” said Bonta. “We’re in court challenging Chino Valley Unified’s forced outing policy for wrongfully and unconstitutionally discriminating against and violating the privacy rights of LGBTQ+ students. The forced outing policy wrongfully endangers the physical, mental, and emotional well-being of non-conforming students who lack an accepting environment in the classroom and at home.”
The New American previously reported:
On July 20, the CVUSD board, by a 4-1 vote, enacted a new policy requiring school officials to notify parents within three days if their child requests “to be identified or treated” as a member of a gender not corresponding to his biological sex, including asking to be addressed by a different name or pronouns; uses a bathroom or locker room not corresponding to his biological sex; attempts to participate in sex-segregated sports with the opposite sex; or asks for any other changes to his school records.
“Coming into being on the board, we had a policy that was quite the opposite. That was to keep the secret,” school-board president Sonja Shaw, a mother of two CVUSD students who was elected to the board in November, told Washington Watch With Tony Perkins the day after the vote.
“Sacramento has waged a war on parental rights, and a lot of it has to do with the perversion of our children,” she said. “It only made sense to put some safeguards back in place.”
Bonta and California Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond did their best to dissuade the board from passing the measure. When they failed, others took to threatening board members with death. At least one suspect has been arrested in connection with those threats.
On August 4, Bonta announced an investigation into CVUSD’s policy, which culminated in his lawsuit. He is also threatening action against other school districts that have enacted similar policies.
“Once again this is government overreach and the political cartel of Bonta, [Governor Gavin] Newsom, and Thurmond is using their muscle and taxpayers’ dollars to shut parents out of their children’s lives,” Shaw said in a statement to the California Family Council.
Bonta argues that CVUSD’s gender policy is illegal under the California constitution, which guarantees equal protection under the law and the right to privacy, and state law that “prohibit[s] discrimination [in public education] on the basis of gender identity and gender expression.”
He also asserts that the school board’s “plain motivations in adopting the policy were to create and harbor animosity, discrimination, and prejudice towards transgender and gender-nonconforming students, without any compelling reason to do so.” As evidence, he claims that “board members made a number of statements describing students who are transgender or gender-nonconforming as suffering from a ‘mental illness’ or ‘perversion,’ or as being a threat to the integrity of the nation and the family” — things the vast majority of people believed to some extent until the last decade.
Republican Assemblyman Bill Essayli, the driving force behind many of the local policies, said in a statement, “Today the California Attorney General officially declared war on every parent in the state of California. The fact that he is spending taxpayer resources on suing school districts for providing information to parents is remarkable and inconsistent with a century of Supreme Court precedent holding that parents have a constitutional right to raise their children without government interference.”
Essayli told the Associated Press that “the state shouldn’t assume parents are a danger to their children and noted that teachers are required to report abuse if they become aware of it.”
“Parents must be involved in this extremely delicate and complicated time in a child’s life,” he said. “It is way too dangerous and reckless to exclude parents.”
Bonta, of course, has his allies. Jody Herman, a public policy scholar at the University of California Los Angeles School of Law, told the AP that “requiring school staff to notify parents if their child identifies as trans is taking a ‘gamble’ with someone’s life.” And Greg Goodlander, president of the Orange Unified Educators Association, said “there’s no evidence” that such policies “enhance student learning” — because, as everyone knows, teachers’ unions are solely concerned with ensuring kids get the best educations possible.
As to claims that CVUSD’s policy endangers trans students, “Chino Valley spokesperson Andi Johnston said the district’s policy protects transgender students by requiring schools to notify social services or law enforcement if the student believes they are in danger,” reported the AP. “In such circumstances, staff wouldn’t notify parents until the appropriate agencies had investigated the concern, Johnston said.”
Although Shaw called Bonta’s lawsuit a “joke,” she believes there’s a method to its madness.
“He knows better and this is another ploy to stop all the districts around California from adopting a common-sense legal policy. We will stand our ground and protect our children with all we can because we are not breaking the law,” she declared. “Parents have a constitutional right in the upbringing of their children. Period. Bring it.”
