The Chino Valley Unified School District and the parents of eight students attending its schools and that of 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 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. 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 their 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
At a meeting held within the auditorium at Don Lugo High School in anticipation of an oversized crowd, the Chino Unified 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 make that point 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 to put the policy in place, with James Na, Andrew Cruz, Jon Monroe and Board President Sonja Shaw, prevailing and Board Member Don Bridge casting the sole dissenting vote.