California blocked from secretly transitioning kids in school

California teachers can no longer hide children’s gender identities from their parents following a permanent injunction issued Monday in a class-action lawsuit.

The lawsuit was filed by teachers who felt a moral duty to protect children and strongly objected to being dishonest with parents about their kids, as the state’s “Parental Exclusion Policies” required them to do. Several California Department of Education policies were “designed to create a zone of secrecy around a school student who expresses gender incongruity,” according to the court order, preventing teachers and school staff from sharing vital information with parents.

“Today’s incredible victory finally, and permanently, ends California’s dangerous and unconstitutional regime of gender secrecy policies in schools,” Paul M. Jonna, special counsel at Thomas More Society, which represented the teachers and parents in the lawsuit, said in a statement following the decision. “The Court’s comprehensive ruling—granting summary judgment on all claims—protects all California parents, students, and teachers, and it restores sanity and common sense. With this decisive ruling from Judge Benitez, all state and local school officials that mandate gender secrecy policies should cease all enforcement or face severe legal consequences.”

The case explored four questions:

Whether the Fourteenth Amendment’s substantive due process clause provides parents a right to access information about their child’s gender identity
Whether the First Amendment’s free exercise of religion clause does the same
Whether the First Amendment provides religious teachers “a right to provide gender information to parents” based on free exercise protections
Whether the First Amendment provides public school teachers “a right to communicate accurate gender information to parents” based on free speech protections

“In each case, this Court concludes that, as a matter of law, the answer is ‘yes,’” Bush-appointed U.S. District Court Judge Roger T. Benitez wrote in his 52-page opinion. “Parents have a right to receive gender information and teachers have a right to provide to parents accurate information about a child’s gender identity.”

Under Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, California in 2024 became the first state to bar schools from requiring staff to notify parents if a child requests a name or pronoun change, seeks access to opposite-sex facilities, or attempts to join opposite-sex sports teams. State education code permits athletes to participate on whichever team is “consistent with his or her gender identity,” and California’s Civil Rights Act further includes “gender identity” under its definition of sex.

“Parental involvement [is] essential to the healthy maturation of schoolchildren,” the court opinion reads. “California’s public school system parental exclusion policies place a communication barrier between parents and teachers.”

“Although as stated previously, the State’s desire to protect vulnerable children from harassment and discrimination is laudable, the parental exclusion policies create a trifecta of harm: they harm the child who needs 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,” the order continues. “They harm the parents by depriving them of the long-recognized Fourteenth Amendment right to care, guide, and make health care decisions for their children, and by substantially burdening many parents’ First Amendment right to train their children in their sincerely held religious beliefs. And finally, they harm teachers who are compelled to violate the sincerely held beliefs and the parent’s rights by forcing them to conceal information they feel is critical for the welfare of their students.”

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