OPINION — California has become the first state in the nation to enact a gender secrecy law that will force teachers and staff to lie to parents and to hide from them critical information they have a right to know about their children.
The new law (AB 1955) comes after more than a dozen school boards and at least one school district in the state have enacted policies to tell parents if students showed signs of gender confusion, such as asking to use names or pronouns inconsistent with their biological sex in school records.
The law was signed last week, and the next day Chino Valley Unified School District (USD) filed a lawsuit challenging the law’s constitutionality of keeping child-related secrets from parents. The law is slated to take effect Jan. 1, 2025.
Governor Gavin Newsom quietly signed AB 1955 into law which would overturn any existing parental notification policies across the state. The law would effectively keep parents in the dark about any gender identity issues of their children at school.
Despite the bill’s controversial run through the state legislature, which included vocal opposition from parents, heated floor debates, and even the physical restraining of a legislator from confronting another legislator who opposed the bill, the bill passed 29-8 in the state Senate and 61-16 in the House Assembly.
The law reads, “An employee or a contractor of a school district, county office of education, charter school, or state special school for the blind or the deaf shall not be required 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 unless otherwise required by state or federal law.
In other words, California’s new law envelops school employees into a cloak of secrecy about a student’s gender expression. The law also states that “outing” students about any change in how they perceive their gender without their consent violates their privacy rights and that students must be able to express themselves freely without fear that teachers might tell their parents. Under this rationale, the law also prohibits school districts from punishing employees for withholding information from parents.
While proponents of the bill claim it will prevent the “forced outing” of students, opponents argue the bill is rooted in disinformation, creates conditions for teachers to openly lie to parents, and is a “direct assault” on parents’ rights.
The new law may change the legal landscape in California affecting ongoing litigation regarding parental notification policies.
Last October, California Attorney General Rob Bonta successfully sued Chino Valley USD, which was one of the few California districts that had a policy to actually keep parents informed about their children. Bonta won a preliminary injunction blocking the district’s parental notification policy.
Yet, last September, a federal judge ruled against the gender secrecy policy of a different California school district ruling that it deprives parents of their longstanding 14th Amendment right to make health care decisions for their children.
In the case, Judge Roger Benitez temporarily blocked Escondido Union School District from punishing two teachers who refused to hide information or lie to parents about student gender confusion. This lawsuit was recently amended with the goal of also getting a permanent injunction against gender secrecy policies, including AB 1955.
While it is uncertain when and how the outcomes of these cases will be determined, attorneys for both the Escondido teachers and Chino Valley USD are pursuing permanent rulings to strike down the new law and protect the constitutional rights of parents.
In contrast to California, at least eight states have laws that protect parental rights and require schools to notify parents if their child displays any gender confusion, such as Alabama, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, North Carolina, North Dakota, South Carolina, and Tennessee. In addition, Arizona, Florida, Kentucky, Montana, and Utah have laws that promote parental notification policies, but do not require them.
According to Parents Defending Education, a grassroots organization promoting non-political education in the public classroom, at least 1,097 U.S. school districts have adopted gender secrecy policies to keep parents blind to any changes in their child’s gender-related behavior.
Liberty Counsel Founder and Chairman Mat Staver said, “Parents have the right to direct the upbringing of their children. Children do not have the capacity to understand the long-term ramifications of gender ideology, and parents must be involved to direct the appropriate care for them. Counseling is the only rational and medically sound option for gender confusion. This California law will further break parents’ trust in the public education system, and it is a betrayal to every parent and teacher in the state. The law appears unconstitutional on its face and needs to be struck down.”
For more information about state laws protecting against gender ideology, visit Liberty Counsel’s website.
How does this help Fayette County schools?
Wow!!!
This was a not about Fayette County or Georgia.
This does help Fayette County Schools or our country.
God Bless the USA
Are we getting numb to the insanity coming at us daily from the woke progressives, especially failed blue states like California? And why is the left so involved with sexual issues with children anyway?
It was awful enough to be grooming kids with Drag Queen Story Hours and sexually-explicit books in school libraries, and allowing boys in girls bathrooms and locker rooms, surpassed only by the idiocy of prescribing puberty blockers and irreversible surgery for troubled pre-teens and teenagers. Who could have imagined treating a psychological issue by mutilating body parts?
So now government bureaucrats will use the force of law to prevent parents from knowing what teachers know and are doing with the parents’ psychologically-troubled child? The idea that our children are not ours, but rather wards of the government, is straight out of Marxist ideology.
Just stop it. All of it.
Know your kids. Take an interest in them. It’s not for the teachers to raise your children.
Mr. Tucker – I couldn’t agree more. Why give up one’s parenting responsibilities to the public school? This alarmist column is a complete nonissue for any responsible parent, but you can see how it stokes the snowflake, grievance-motivated who are always looking for some new way to be offended.
Doug – While we agree that it is not the government’s role to raise anyone’s children, it is also not government’s role to mandate that teachers withhold or lie about information that could be critical to parents’ understanding of what is going on with their child.
Using your logic, you and Fiction would be OK for bureaucrats to criminalize other feedback about the well-being of your child at school. After all, you say that if you are a responsible parent, you know all about your kid.
No teacher should be allowed to tell you that your kindergartener is a bully and hits others, right? Or that your sixth-grader sits alone at lunch? Or that your eight-grader doodles violent cartoons during class?
Please explain the rationale for expecting teachers to disclose any number of serious, relevant, mental or behavioral issues a kid could have at school, but excluding that Johnny now goes by Sally, puts on make-up, uses the girls’ bathroom, and requires others to use his choice of pronouns.
Let’s be honest. This isn’t anything but a wedge issue because gender dysphoria among children is extremely rare. Just like complaints that Trump was caging children at the border or that white supremacist groups are typical MAGA voters, these are gross exaggerations. The other team grandly inflates violent crime rates among undocumented immigrants and election fraud to add grievance upon grievance.
We would all do much better to concern ourselves with real issues rather than these attention-seeking outliers.
AB 1955 is constructed to protect educators and students from bullying and harm. From the California Department of Education, July 15, 2024 News Release #24-37, “The SAFETY Act prohibits and invalidates any adopted school board policy, rule, or administrative regulation that requires forced outings. The SAFETY Act does not limit students’ and parents’ ability to discuss gender identities within their own families in the manner that they choose. The Act states that a school employee shall not be required to disclose any information related to a pupil’s LGBTQ+ identity to any other person without the pupil’s consent unless otherwise required by state or federal law. The Act does not limit a parent’s ability to request school records.”
If parents talk and encourage family values with their adolescent children and guide them through the angsts of growing, they should not experience many unpleasant surprises. The key is to know your child. Also, even with AB 1955, a good teacher can still help parents with their students’ social/psychological issues without divulging details.