California AG launches civil rights probe of school district's transgender policy
Chino Valley Unified School District president Sonja Shaw says liberal state leaders' stance on parental rights is 'absolute insanity.'
A highly contested California bill signed into law last week by Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom has stoked ire among parents and politicians, who slammed the gender identity law as a usurpation of parents' rights.
The first in the nation bill bans schools in the state from being forced to notify parents if their child uses pronouns or a gender identity opposite their biological sex.
AB1955 prevents school districts from being mandated to notify parents if their child starts using different pronouns or identifies as a different gender than what’s on their school record and prohibits school districts from "retaliating or taking adverse action against an employee" who affirms a student's gender identity.
"This bill would prohibit school districts … from enacting or enforcing any policy, rule, or administrative regulation that requires an employee or a contractor to disclose any information related to a pupil’s sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression to any other person without the pupil’s consent," the law states.
The law also "prohibit[s] employees or contractors of those educational entities from being required to make such a disclosure unless otherwise required by law, as provided."
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Gavin Newsom/Classroom (Getty Images)
Erin Friday, California attorney and co-lead at Our Duty, a group that helps parents protect their children from trans ideology, told Fox News Digital that the law cements secrecy in California's public schools.
"We are the first state to really mandate that teachers must lie to parents about their child's gender identity," she said.
Friday's own daughter struggled with gender dysphoria before she and her husband intervened. Her daughter no longer identifies as transgender.
"You take that opportunity away once you have adults elsewhere concretizing the false identity of these kids and these kids are in school with these teachers … 6 or 7 hours a day [and are] being affirmed," Friday said. "The parents don't have a chance to pull these kids out. These kids are now stuck in this gender identity and the social contagion continues."
AB1955 also requires the State Department of Education to develop resources for LGBTQ students and strategies to increase support for LGBTQ students.
The law, which Newsom signed on July 15, will take effect in the new year, conflicting with policies several school districts in the state recently passed requiring parents to be notified if a child requests to change their gender identification.
School districts started passing their own policies after similar laws to notify parents failed in the California legislature.
Friday helped California State Assemblymember Bill Essayli write AB1314, which died in the California Assembly before it ever got a hearing, and she said AB1955 is a response to the effort to enact parental notification laws.
Chino Valley Unified School District in Southern California was the first school district in the state to pass a parental notification policy, prompting the state's Attorney General Rob Bonta to file a lawsuit against the district in August 2023. Earlier that month, Bonta announced a civil rights investigation into the school district over the policy, which he said required staff to "out" transgender students.
Now, Chino Valley USD is suing Newsom over the law, arguing it violates parents' rights under the U.S. Constitution. The Liberty Justice Center (LJC) filed the lawsuit last Tuesday on behalf of the school district.
Students and classroom (iStock/Getty)
Izzy Gardon, director of communications for Newsom, said, "This is a deeply unserious lawsuit, seemingly designed to stoke the dumpster fire formerly known as Twitter rather than surface legitimate legal claims."
"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," he added. "We’re confident the state will swiftly prevail in this case."
School districts in Murrieta, Temecula, Orange and Rocklin all enacted similar parental notification policies, according to Our Duty.
Many Democratic lawmakers agree with Bonta's assessment, including California Assemblyman Al Muratsuchi, who addressed an angry crowd of parents about AB1955 in June ahead of the bill's passage.
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"There are numerous studies that show that when students are outed for not identifying with the gender of their birth, assigned at their birth, that they get beaten by their parents, they get beaten by their classmates," Muratsuchi said.
"Those are the facts," he added, without pointing to evidence of the claim. Immediately, the parents called him out for what they said was a "lie."
"I can't believe he said that out loud," one parent said.
Vincent Wagner, senior counsel with the Center for Parental Rights at Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), told Fox News Digital that the Constitution guarantees parents the fundamental right to direct the upbringing, education and health care of their children. But, he said, under AB1955, the state is interfering with parents' ability to exercise that right.
"Kids are going to do better when parents know what's going on and can be there to support their kids, because parents love their kids more than anybody else in the world," he added.
Wagner said that school districts, by the terms of AB1955, are prohibited from doing the "right thing."
"When a school district wants to do the right thing in California, it's no longer allowed to, which is not unheard of in California," he added. "Prior to this law, the state government has gone after some local school districts that wanted to keep parents in the loop on these decisions."
California Governor Gavin Newsom (Chris duMond/Shutterstock)
Newsom spokesperson Brandon Richards defended the new California law in a statement to Fox News Digital, arguing it would "keep children safe while protecting the critical role of parents" and "the child-parent relationship by preventing politicians and school staff from inappropriately intervening in family matters and attempting to control if, when, and how families have deeply personal conversations."
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Friday said that blue states around the country are keeping secrets from parents because "policies to lie to parents" are already in place through school board policies as opposed to law.
"We're going to continue to see schools lie to parents, and we're going to continue to see teachers filing lawsuits, not wanting to deceive parents and those have been successful," she said. "We're going to continue to see lawsuits by parents and those cases are now moving up through the appellate courts."
Friday said it's ultimately going to be the Supreme Court that's going to decide if parents have the right to know if their children are suffering from mental health issues at school.
In the meantime, she said a lot of children are going to be harmed because parents who learn of their child's gender struggles early are able to get them the mental health care that they need. If they don't get that care, she said it will lead to more kids being harmed, more detransitioners and more suicides.
Wagner agreed, warning AB 1855 is part of a national trend where schools interfere with parents in what he said is a constitutionally protected right.
"When California passed anti-parent laws in the past, other states have followed suit," he said. "That happened in late 2022 through 2023, some other states followed California's lead in passing some anti-parent laws."
"It's important to identify a key player like California and call out what it's doing and connect it with what's going on around the country," he added.
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