The Chino Valley Unified School District and the parents of eight students attending its schools and those in three other school districts in California have filed a lawsuit against Governor Gavin Newsom, California Attorney General Rob Bonta and California Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond in an effort to prevent the enforcement of a recently passed state law prohibiting schools from making a practice of notifying parents if their children are assuming a gender different from the one assigned them at birth.
The suit comes nearly a year after the Chino Valley Unified School District Board of Trustees instituted a parental notification policy that was in short order challenged by Bonta and his office and thereby blocked from being applied.
Representing the district and parents Oscar Avila, Monica Botts, Jason Craig, Kristi Hays, Cole Mann, Victor Romero, Gheorghe Rosca, Jr. and Leslie Sawyer are the Austin, Texas-based Liberty Justice Center and attorney Emily Rae.
The lawsuit challenges AB 1955, which was signed by Governor Newsom on Monday, July 15 and is scheduled to take effect January 1, 2025. AB 1955, authored by Assembly Member Chris Ward, D-San Diego, came in reaction to the passage of Chino Valley Unified’s policy followed by similar actions by the Orange, Temecula Valley and Murrieta Valley school districts.
The Chino Unified School District Board of Education took up the issue of parental notification after Republican Assemblyman Bill Essayli in March 2023 introduced Assembly Bill 1314, which would have required schools in California to notify parents in writing within three days if a student identified at school as a gender different from his or her assigned gender at birth. AB 1314 died a quiet legislative procedural death when Assemblyman Al Muratsuchi, a Democrat and the chairman of the Assembly Education Committee, declined to set a hearing date for the bill before his committee, such that the bill was not given a chance to be considered by the entire Assembly.
With the matter unable to advance at the state level, the Chino Valley Unified School Board took up consideration of utilizing a piecemeal strategy of instituting similar policies throughout the state school district-by-school district and then took the lead in doing so. Before a capacity crowd within the
auditorium at Don Lugo High School, the school board considered adopting a policy, which was well advertised in advance, that requires faculty at the district’s schools to inform parents if their child identifies as transgender or insists on using a name, pronoun or facilities other than those traditionally intended for an individual as identified on that student’s birth certificate.
Thurmond sojourned from his office in Sacramento to Chino to address the school board and express his opposition to the policy change. In comments that were abbreviated because the school board had reduced the speaking time of those addressing it that evening from the normal three minutes to one minute to accommodate the sheer number of speakers, Thurmond made the point, that “nearly half of students who identify as being LBGTQ+ are considering suicide.” Thurmond then moved on to assert that some parents might react with either physical violence or engage in psychological or emotional abuse of their children if faced with a child altering his or her gender. “I ask you to consider this: The policy that you consider tonight not only might fall outside the laws that respect privacy and safety for our students but may put our students at risk because they may not be in homes where they can be…” Thurmond said, at which point his microphone was cut off.
Ultimately, the board voted 4-to-1, with James Na, Andrew Cruz, Jon Monroe and Board President Sonja Shaw prevailing and Board Member Don Bridge casting the sole dissenting vote, to put the parental notification mandate, technically referred to as Policy 5020.1, into place.
The actuation of the notification requirement in the Chino Valley School District was something of a cultural milestone in California and elsewhere. A handful of other districts in the state, including Murrieta Valley Unified and Temecula Valley Unified in Riverside County and Anderson Union High School District in Shasta County adopted similar requirements. Viewpoints and opinions on the issue in large measure broke along ideological, partisan and sexual orientation lines. Conservatives, Republicans, Fundamentalist Christians and, seemingly, a majority of heterosexuals favored keeping parents informed about the comportment of their children in an academic setting, while those considering themselves to be liberals or progressives, a majority of Democrats and an overwhelming number of those within the lesbian gay bisexual queer transsexual community believed that students have privacy rights that allow them to prevent their parents from knowing the identity they assume in a public school setting. In this way, Shaw, Monroe, Cruz and Na, all of whom are Republicans, found themselves at the forefront of a movement challenging the social dictates of the dominant political force in the state: the Democratic Party, with its supermajorities in both houses of the California Legislature, the Assembly and the State Senate; the California Congressional delegation, which numbers 40 Democrats and 12 Republicans; and all of the state’s constitutional offices from governor to lieutenant governor to attorney general to secretary of state to state controller to superintendent of public instruction to state treasurer to insurance commissioner being held by Democrats.
The board majority’s success in passing the parental notification strategy was short-lived. Miffed at the fashion in which he had been cut off a mere 60 seconds into his presentation on July 20 after having traveled nearly half the length of the Golden State to attend the school board meeting that night as well as the school board’s adoption of the policy, Thurmond networked with like-minded Democrats in an effort to block not just the Chino Unified School District’s policy but the momentum the July 20 vote of the board had created with other school districts in the state which had a majority of conservative/Republican members who were emulating the Chino board and were in various stages toward adopting their own parental notification policies.
On August 28, 2023, California Attorney General Rob Bonta filed a civil suit against the Chino Valley Unified School District, petitioning the San Bernardino County Superior Court to stop enforcement of the notification policy. Bonta asserted that the need to prevent “mental harm, emotional harm and physical harm” to those students who are products of families who are not accepting of their choice to deviate from their birth or biological gender trumps the right of all parents to be informed of their children’s identity choice. “This policy is destructive,” Bonta asserted. “It’s discriminatory and it’s downright dangerous. It has no place in California, which is why we have moved in court to strike it down.”
The suit maintained that the policy “has placed transgender and gender nonconforming students in danger of imminent, irreparable harm from the consequences of forced disclosures.” Transgender students, as a consequence of the school district action, were, according to Bonta, “under threat’’ and “in fear,” facing “the risk of emotional, physical, and psychological harm from non-affirming or unaccepting parents or guardians.”
Bonta maintained the policy “unlawfully discriminates against transgender and gender nonconforming students, subjecting them to disparate treatment, harassment, and abuse, mental, emotional, and physical.”
On September 6, 2023, San Bernardino County Superior Court Judge Thomas Garza granted the State of California a temporary restraining order prohibiting the Chino Valley Unified School District from enforcing the policy. In doing so, Judge Garza signaled that the court was favorably predisposed toward Bonta’s position when he suggested the rights with regard to gender transitioning were as basic to the U.S. and California constitutions as religious freedom when he analogized changing from one gender to another to making a religious conversion, while stating that under his analysis, Chino Valley Unified’s Policy 5020.1 qualified as being “too broad, too general” while lacking “clear purpose or reference of parental support and involvement.”
Garza acknowledged that it was not likely that the matter would be resolved in San Bernardino County Superior Court and that whatever ruling came about at the trial court level would be appealed to the appellate court, the California Supreme Court and possibly to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Despite the Chino Valley Unified School Board majority being outmuscled politically, having lost ground legally within the forum of San Bernardino County Superior Court, as well as being outmaneuvered in terms of the presentation of its position to the public within the popular media in many different venues, there followed developments suggesting the principle of parental notification at the heart of the policy might withstand the efforts to resist it.
Numerous other school districts in the state put into place identical or very similar parental notification policies. If it once appeared that Chino Valley Unified was on its own in a struggle against the entire State of California and its political establishment as dominated by the governor, the state attorney general and the superintendent of schools together with the legislature, it was soon apparent that was not the case, as other school districts, each with their own legal representatives, came to stand side-by-side with Chino Valley Unified. Whereas Bonta may have thought that by taking Chino Valley Unified to court the state would cost the district money and make it rethink the policy altogether while simultaneously intimidating other districts and effectively preventing them from adopting parental notification requirements, school board members of like mind to the majority in Chino Valley Unified were willing to take on  the superintendent of public instruction, the attorney general, the governor, the legislature and the state in general, in a ploy which mirrored what was being done to Chino Valley Unified, one that was costing the state money, forcing it to expend resources and have its attorneys and officials tied up in court in counties up and down the state on cases separate from the one involving Chino Valley Unified in San Bernardino County.
If Bonta thought that the lawsuit would harm the board majority politically in that the four would be portrayed in the left-leaning press as closeminded, bigoted and transphobic sadists intent on hurting defenseless children, that never came about as the media focused as much if not more on the parental rights aspect of the controversy. The board members’ constituents – the parents within the district whose votes counted in determining who would serve on the school board – turned out to be lopsidedly in favor of parental notification. In this sense, the lawsuit challenging the policy had strengthened rather than weakened the board majority.
Moreover, all four members of the board majority, Shaw as the board chairwoman in particular, took on a certain cachet, both statewide and nationally, as conservative icons fighting the liberal establishment. They garnered a place in the national media spotlight as crusaders gamely fighting to ensure parental rights in the face of bullying by an overwhelming state bureaucracy run by ultraliberal politicians willing to throw the power of government into the fray against a small but determined band of local elected officials upholding principles they fervently believed in.
At the same time, California state officials had hoped that forcing the district to go to court to defend its policy would generate negative publicity for district officials, as they would be in the position of expending precious district funding to put up a legal fight. This would leave Chino Valley’s school officials vulnerable to the charge that they were spending money that should have been going to educate students on lawyers as a result of the board members’ use of their positions to make a political statement unrelated to the district’s academic mission, the Democrats ruling the roost in Sacramento believed. As it would turn out, however, the Liberty Justice Center, a non-partisan public-interest litigation consortium with major offices in Illinois and Texas that champions the constitutional rights of American families, workers, advocates, and entrepreneurs throughout the United States, took up a defense of the policy, reducing tremendously the cost of mounting a defense of the district’s policy and limiting the drain and strain on the district’s assets and personnel.
As significantly, there have been court rulings at the federal level which suggest that parental rights, in particular the ability of parents to know or learn about the terms and conditions under which their children are being educated as well as the substance of what they are being taught cannot be abridged by action, priorities or policies of the educational institutions to which those parents have entrusted their children. Even if Bonta, Thurmond, the California Department of Public Instruction and the State of California itself prevail in the legal action that has been taken against Chino Valley Unified at the level of the San Bernardino Superior Court, the appellate courts and the California Supreme Court, the issue does not promise to be that cut and dried upon reaching the federal courts.
Of significance is that one federal court ruling cutting to the heart of issues at play in the state’s suit against Chino Valley Unified took place not in a venue outside California or under a jurisdiction subject to another federal circuit, but one in Southern California. In that matter, the federal judge in question was called upon to decide a question precisely the same as that at stake with Chino Valley Unified’s parental notification procedure.
Within days after Judge Garza’s ruling, Senior United States District Judge Roger Benitez in a ruling emanating from the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California rejected the legal theory that minor students have privacy rights that preclude their parents from learning about their gender identity, which is the central premise in the lawsuit Bonta filed against the Chino Valley Unified School District.
In April 2023, Elizabeth Mirabelli and Lori Ann West, middle school teachers in Escondido in San Diego County, filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California against the Escondido Union School District Board of Education, the California State Board of Education, the California Department of Education and State Superintendent of Schools Tony Thurmond over a district policy which required them to dissemble and outright mislead parents when they face a situation in which students have assumed a gender at a variance with their natural sex.
Their lawsuit stated teachers were required to use “any pronouns or a gender-specific name requested by the student during school, while reverting to biological pronouns and legal names when speaking with parents in order to actively hide information about their child’s gender identity from them.”
Mirabelli and West contended in the suit that their First Amendment rights were violated by the district in its requirement that they either lie to parents outright or prevent the parents from learning the truth.
In his ruling issued September 14, 2023, Judge Roger Benitez summarized the question he was faced with thusly, “A parent’s right to make decisions concerning the care, custody, control, and medical care of their children is one of the oldest of the fundamental liberty interests that Americans enjoy. However, if a school student expresses words or actions during class that may be the first visible sign that the child is dealing with gender incongruity or possibly gender dysphoria, conditions that may (or may not) progress into significant, adverse, life-long social-emotional health consequences, would it be lawful for the school to require teachers to hide the event from the parents?”
Judge Benitez concluded that the teachers’ religious beliefs and free speech rights were violated by the Escondido Union School District’s policy, and wrote that students in the position of being caught between attending school using one gender identity while maintaining a different gender identity at home would be harmed because they need “parental guidance and possibly mental health intervention to determine if the incongruence is organic or whether it is the result of bullying, peer pressure, or a fleeting impulse. Parental involvement is essential to the healthy maturation of schoolchildren. The Escondido Union School District has adopted a policy without parent input that places a communication barrier between parents and teachers.”
The court granted Mirabelli and West a preliminary injunction against the district policy.
Revealed during the course of Mirabelli’s and West’s litigation was that school staff and teachers at the school where they taught were sharing with one another lists of students that essentially revealed which students at the school had changed gender, as those lists provided the names and pronouns teachers should use when dealing with the students in the educational setting and the other names to use when communicating with parents. One exhibit presented in the Mirabelli and West case, a 2022 email, demonstrated many parents were unaware of their students’ preferred names and pronouns.
The Mirabelli and West case has direct relevancy to the circumstance being dealt with in the lawsuit brought by Bonta against the Chino Valley Unified School District in state court. The principle enunciated by Judge Benitez has not yet been established at the level of California’s Superior Court. Binding precedent applies only among courts of the same system, such as a state court hierarchy. Legal precedent set in the federal court system is not generally binding on any state court, though it could be utilized as what is commonly referred to as persuasive precedent. So far, Bonta has disregarded the implication of Judge Benitez’s ruling in the Mirabelli and West case, as it interfered with the legal theory he is proceeding under.
Nevertheless, Bonta may have already inadvertently invited the court to consider Judge Benitez’s ruling in the Mirabelli and West case when his office, on October 12, 2023, asked for the court to take judicial notice of a case that does not fall under California law, that being a decision of the New Jersey Superior Court in the case of Platkin v. Middletown Township Board of Education. In that case, on August 18, 2023, the Monmouth County Superior Court preliminarily enjoined three school districts from enforcing a mandatory parental disclosure policy similar to the one contained in Policy 5020. In this way, Bonta opened the playing field for the magistrate hearing the matter in San Bernardino County Superior Court, Judge Michael Sachs, to consider Judge Benitez’s decision, which is on point in the Chino Valley Unified case, to be considered.
After Judge Garza and Judge Sachs entered temporary rulings and a preliminary injunction preventing the school district from implementing portions of Policy 5020.1, the district sought a workaround with regard to the potential that Bonta could prevail at the trial court level, then perhaps again at the appellate level and perhaps before the California Supreme Court.
A little more than four months ago, the district made what legal and constitutional experts said is calculated to be an adjustment of the parental notification policy that Bonta challenged which will allow the notification mandate to stand.
The policy originally passed by the school board was more or less specific to efforts at or toward gender alteration or showings thereof. The action taken by the school board on Thursday, March 7 made the notification requirement more general but yet inclusive of the circumstances covered by the policy initiated in the summer of 2023.
The revised policy adopted on March 7 states that schools must notify parents or guardians if a student makes any change to his or her official or unofficial record, participates in extracurricular activities, or is involved in any case of bullying or possible suicide.
All references to gender were removed from the revised policy.
The presentation of the new policy and its discussion lasted for more than two hours and forty minutes during the March 7 meeting, at which point it was given approval by the same 4-to-1 margin that the original policy was approved, with Shaw, Monroe, Cruz and Na voting in favor of it and Bridge in opposition.
The district undertook to make the change after Riverside Superior Court Judge Eric Keen, who is hearing a case brought by the State of California against the Temecula Valley Unified School District similar to that one filed against Chino Valley Unified, on February 23, 2023 refused to grant the State of California a temporary restraining order to prevent Temecula Valley Unified from enforcing its parental notification policy, which is slightly different from that of Chino Valley Unified in that it makes no reference to gender or gender reidentification.
After lesbian gay bisexual queer and transsexual advocates argued that the new policy adopted by Chino Valley Unified and other parental notification policies in other districts that avoided mention of gender reidentification merely created a loophole that allows those districts to infringe on students’ rights, Assembly Member Chris Ward crafted AB 1955, which bans schools from requiring teachers to notify parents about their children’s gender identity. The Liberty Justice Center, which was aware that AB 1955 was in the works, prepared to take action. After AB 1955 was passed by both houses of the state legislature and signed by Governor Newsom on Monday, July 15, attorney Emily Rae, who is a member of the California Bar and who is based out of the Liberty Justice Center Austin, Texas office, filed suit on behalf of the Chino Valley Unified School District on July 16.
According to the suit, “Numerous studies assert that transgender and gender nonconforming students suffer from increased psychological, emotional, and physical harassment and abuse, and that transgender youth experience an abnormally high number of suicidal thoughts and make an abnormally high number of suicide attempts. Faced with these concerns, various California school districts have adopted policies under which the school respects the wishes of students who ask to be treated as a gender different from their natal sex, while also making parents aware that the school is participating in the social transition of their child. These policies ensure that school districts do not betray the extraordinary trust placed in them by parents, who otherwise would be misled about a monumental change to the development of their child and to that child’s official and unofficial school records.”
The suit states, “These parental notification policies often address not only gender transition but also myriad other issues that parents would want or need to know about their child’s education and development. For example, if a student is injured, bullied, or exhibits suicidal behavior at school, but does not want their parents to know, a school will notify the parents. If a student breaks their arm, hits their head, or develops a fever, the school will immediately tell the student’s parents. If a student is bullied or involved in a verbal or physical fight, the school will tell the parents. If a student expresses a desire to hurt or kill themself, the school will tell the parents. So, too, must a school tell parents if a student has asked the school to participate in that student’s gender transition. But through Assembly Bill 1955 (AB 1955) California now seeks to bar schools from adopting policies that would require notifying parents when their children may be at increased risk of psychological, emotional, and physical harassment and abuse, and extremely high rates of suicide and suicide attempts. Specifically, AB 1955 states that a ‘school district… shall not enact or enforce any policy, rule, or administrative regulation that would require an employee or a contractor to disclose any information related to a pupil’s… gender identity or gender expression to any other person without the pupil’s consent…” (emphasis added). This means that, no matter how young a child is, a school cannot tell the child’s parents the school is socially transitioning their child without the minor’s ‘consent.’”
The lawsuit states, “This action is brought on behalf of Chino Valley Unified School District and certain California parents of children in the public school system who seek to bar California from implementing AB 1955 in violation of their First and Fourteenth Amendment rights and the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act. Taken together, these provisions upend the traditional relationship between students, their parents, and their teachers.”
According to the lawsuit, “Socially transitioning children without parental involvement negatively impacts children.”
The suit contends that by preventing parents from knowing their children are undertaking medical procedures or being administered hormones or drugs to alter their gender, the physicians treating those children or prescribing them chemicals that will alter the adolescents’ bodies may be deprived of information that could be crucial to rendering safe and proper medical care and assistance.
“A social transition can include more than just name and pronoun changes—individuals adopting a transgender identity sometimes change their hairstyle, clothing, or their appearance in other ways; begin using opposite-sex facilities; and make other social changes,” the suit states, “In medical and psychological literature, however, the phrase ‘social transition’ is primarily used to refer to name and pronoun changes. ‘Social transition’ is distinct from medical transition, which refers to various medical interventions to bring one’s physical appearance into closer alignment with one’s asserted gender identity, such as puberty blockers, cross-sex hormone therapy, and various surgical interventions. The primary therapeutic purpose of social transitioning is to relieve the psychological distress associated with having a mismatch between one’s natal sex and gender identity.”
The lawsuit notes that the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, a scientific, professional, and educational organization that has produced a set of recommendations for transgender health care in its “Standards of Care” document calls for parents of children who are undergoing a gender transition to be intimately involved in that process when it takes place.
Moreover, according to the lawsuit, it is illegal in most jurisdictions in the United States to subject a minor to gender transition without the knowledge and consent of the minor’s parents.
“Aside from a few limited exceptions, medical and mental-health providers generally cannot see or treat a minor without informed consent from the parent(s)/legal guardian(s), both as a matter of state laws and as a matter of medical ethics,” the suit states, quoting from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health’s Standards of Care for the Health of Transgender and Gender Diverse People, continuing, “In most settings, for minors, the legal guardian is integral to the informed consent process: if a treatment is to be given, the legal guardian (often the parent[s]/caregiver[s]) provides the informed consent to do so.”
The lawsuit states, again referencing and incorporating quotes from Standards of Care for the Health of Transgender and Gender Diverse People, “This is because children and adolescents lack the ‘skills for future thinking, planning, big picture thinking, and self-reflection’ that are necessary for informed decision-making. Minors’ decisions are often influenced by factors that are unrelated to their long-term best interests, such as ‘a sense of urgency that stems from hypersensitivity to reward,’ a ‘heightened focus on
peer relationships,’ and ‘increased risk-taking behaviors.’ In light of the ongoing and unfinished development of emotional and cognitive maturity during childhood and adolescence, ‘[i]n most settings, for minors, the legal guardian is integral to the informed consent process.’”
According to the suit, “Parental involvement is also necessary as a practical matter. Many children and adolescents could not get to any appointments with a mental-health provider without their parents’ assistance. And most children and adolescents do not have their own health insurance and would have no way to pay for those appointments. Parental involvement is also important for accurate diagnosis, as parents often have a critical perspective on the history and likely causes of a child’s or adolescent’s gender questioning feelings. Parents are often the only people who have frequently and regularly interacted with a child or adolescent throughout the child’s or adolescent’s entire life, and therefore they have a unique view of the child’s development over time. Indeed, parents often have more knowledge than even the child or adolescent does of whether their child or adolescent exhibited any signs of gender incongruence or gender dysphoria during the earliest years of life. Thus, parental involvement is a critical part of the diagnostic process to evaluate how long the child or adolescent has been experiencing gender incongruence, whether there might be any external cause of those feelings, and a prediction of how likely those feelings are to persist.”
The lawsuit states, “[A]s the World Professional Association for Transgender Health notes, ‘a parent/caregiver report may provide critical context in situations in which a young person experiences very recent or sudden self-awareness of gender diversity and a corresponding gender treatment request, or when there is concern for possible excessive peer and social media influence on a young person’s current self-gender concept.’ Thus, the reconstructed history from a child or adolescent often does not match the reported history from the parent. Likewise, children and adolescents often acknowledge that they have consumed many hours of social media from other transgender youth and have absorbed these experiences in some personal way.”
The lawsuit maintains, “Indeed, the World Professional Association for Transgender Health recommends ‘involving parent(s) or primary caregiver(s) in the assessment process… in almost all situations,’ and adds that ‘including parent(s)/caregiver(s) in the assessment process to encourage and facilitate increased parental understanding and support of the adolescent may be one of the most helpful practices available.’ The World Professional Association for Transgender Health recommends that mental health providers ‘should provide guidance to parents/caregivers and supports to a child when a social gender transition is being considered’ and to ‘facilitate the parents/caregivers’ success in making informed decisions about the advisability and/or parameters of a social transition for their child.’ If a school facilitates a social transition at school without parental knowledge and buy-in, it necessarily interferes with the parents’ ability to take a cautious approach and pursue an evaluation and assessment before allowing their child or adolescent to make significant changes to their identity. A school-facilitated transition without parental knowledge also interferes with parents’ ability to pursue a treatment approach that does not involve an immediate transition—such as an exploratory process to understand the cause of the feelings or self-perceptions of gender incongruence.”
According to the suit, “A school-facilitated transition over the objection of parents (or, possibly worse, without their knowledge) necessarily creates tension in the parent-child relationship. A common principle in the training for psychotherapists who work with children and adolescents is to never create or aggravate any tensions in the parent-child relationship. By facilitating a social transition at school over the parents’ objection or without their knowledge, a school would drive a wedge between the parent and child. Similarly, facilitating a double life for some children, in which they present as transgender in some contexts but not in other contexts, is not in their best interest.”
The lawsuit asserts that “The World Professional Association for Transgender Health recognizes that ‘social transition for children typically can only take place with the support and acceptance of parents/caregivers.’ Likewise, ‘adolescents are typically dependent on their caregivers/parents for guidance in numerous ways,’ including as they ‘navigate through the process of deciding about treatment options.’ As the World Professional Association for Transgender Health notes elsewhere, ‘[p]arent and family support of transgender diverse youth is a primary predictor of youth well-being.’ Circumventing, bypassing, or excluding parents from decisions about a social transition undermines the main support structure for a child or adolescent who desperately needs support. Indeed, plaintiffs are not aware of any professional body that has endorsed school-facilitated social transitions without parental knowledge.”
The lawsuit maintains that “When a child presents with a desire to use a new name or pronouns, the very first step should be to notify parents and involve them in the process of considering whether the child should undergo a careful professional assessment by a mental health professional with expertise in child gender incongruence. Prekindergarten to 12th grade minor students, most of whom are too young to drive, vote, or provide medical consent for themselves, are also too young to make life-altering decisions about their expressed gender identity without their parents’ knowledge. But that is precisely what AB 1955 enables, with severe consequences for children too young to fully comprehend them.”
The lawsuit makes the point that “A number of school districts in California had, prior to AB 1955’s passage, enacted policies designed to protect students, and to protect parents’ rights to determine, without undue interference by the State, how best to raise, nurture, and educate the child. Parental notification policies like those adopted by the Chino Valley Unified School District and other school districts are consistent with best practices relating to parental notification when a child or adolescent expresses a desire to be socially transitioned at school insofar as they encourage and facilitate maintaining the relationship between parents and their children. Best mental health practices abhor activity that maintains secrets between children and their parents, which create distrust and tension. In all cases, parental consent is required to provide medical and psychological treatment to minors. In part, this is because the science of mental health recognizes that the best evidence regarding a minor’s mental and emotional well-being comes from first-hand accounts by parents, rather than potentially biased accounts from immature children.”
The Sentinel sought from Governor Newsom, Attorney General Bonta and Superintendent of Public Instruction Thurmond their reaction to the lawsuit.
The Sentinel noted that there are parents in the Chino Valley and elsewhere who believe they should be able to learn in a timely manner if their children are assuming a gender identity other than the one those parents associate with those offspring. The Sentinel asked if Newsom, Bonta and Thurmond perceived that expectation on the part of parents to be unrealistic.
Noting that many people consider it to be unrealistic to expect that the parents of children who have concluded that they are a gender different from their gender designated at birth will not at some point discover that these children in question are reidentifying their gender, the Sentinel observed that some of those parents will likely come to greatly resent having been kept in the dark about a key aspect of their children’s lives by responsible entities such as school officials who may have discovered that before they do. The Sentinel sought from Newsom, Bonta and Thurmond how they would respond to those who think that it is not right for the government to be secretive about such things that it becomes privy to as a result of parents entrusting their children to the state/local educational system.
The Sentinel asked Newsom, Bonta and Thurmond if they maintain that parents should have no right to know about their children’s gender identification if it deviates from their birth gender. The Sentinel asked Newsom, Bonta and Thurmond whether, given the interpersonal dynamics within families, it wouldn’t be better that parents learn about things such as the gender reidentification of their children sooner rather than later.
Conceding that the intention of AB 1955 is to ensure the safety of children who gender reidentify who might have parents who would react violently or inflict violence, physical or psychological or emotional, on them upon finding his/her/their child is not conventionally gender conforming, the Sentinel asked Newsom, Bonta and Thurmond if it might be better to address the issue by enforcing the law with regard to child abuse, etc., rather than lumping all parents together, particularly since the vast majority of parents are not abusive toward their children.
The Sentinel asked Newsom, Bonta and Thurmond if in their view AB 1955 prevented as many children from obtaining the support of their parents as it will protect from abusive parents.
Lastly, the Sentinel inquired of Newsom, Bonta and Thurmond if they consider AB 1955 to be a perfect law or rather saw it as an imperfect law that is nonetheless necessary.
In response, Newsom’s spokesman, Izzy Gardon, who was formerly Bonta’s official press mouthpiece, stated that those at the pinnacle of California’s state government do not perceive the lawsuit challenging AB 1955 as raising valid legal issues.
“This is a deeply unserious lawsuit, seemingly designed to stoke the dumpster fire formerly known as Twitter rather than surface legitimate legal claims,” Gardon said. “AB 1955 preserves the child-parent relationship. California law ensures minors can’t legally change their name or gender without parental consent, and parents continue to have guaranteed and full access to their student’s educational records consistent with federal law. We’re confident the state will swiftly prevail in this case.”
-Mark Gutglueck