California’s constitution allows schools to hide a student’s transgender identity from their parents, state Attorney General Rob Bonta claimed in a legal alert to school districts late last week.
Bonta warned school districts across the state against policies requiring school employees to notify parents if a student is identifying by a different name and pronouns or asking to play on sports teams or use the facilities of the opposite sex. Bonta wrote:
The Office of the California Attorney General issues this legal alert to remind all school boards that forced gender identity disclosure policies—which target transgender and gender nonconforming students by mandating that school personnel disclose a student’s gender identity or gender nonconformity to a parent or guardian without the student’s express consent—violate state law.
“…[S]uch policies harm transgender and gender nonconforming students by forcing them to choose between hiding their identity in school or being compelled to share it with a parent or guardian whom they believe may emotionally, psychologically, or physically harm them,” he added. “When forced with this decision, many students feel compelled to stay in the closet.”
Bonta proceeded to assert in the four-page memo that these policies violate state law and the state Constitution in three ways.
First, the Democrat attorney general claimed that “forced disclosure policies” violate California’s Equal Protection Clause “by expressly discriminating based on gender identity.” Second, he argued that such policies violate the state’s statutory prohibition on discrimination “based on gender identity.” Third, he claimed “forced disclosure” violates students’ state Constitutional right to privacy “with respect to how and when to disclose their gender identity.” Bonta went on to say:
These privacy and autonomy interests are protected by the California constitution, and the State and local school districts have a compelling interest in not only protecting student privacy under the circumstances here but also ensuring that transgender and gender nonconforming students are protected from the reasonable risk of physical, emotional, and psychological harm that forced disclosure causes.
The memo comes amid a legal battle between Bonta and the Chino Valley School District, which issued a policy protecting sex-confused minors from pro-gender ideology schools in July after a 4-1 vote from the school board. A judge blocked parts of the policy in October of 2023.
Chino Valley School Board President Sonja Shaw, who supported the policy, has accused Bonta of being “obsessed with power.”
“He’s showing that he wants to be the parent of our children and he’s not doing his real job, which is keeping California safe,” Shaw told KCAL. “What is he doing to make them safe at campus by keeping parents out? It absolutely makes no sense.”
Chino Valley Attorney Jacob Hiebert told the outlet that Bonta presumes that all parents are abusers.
“What the attorney general has done here is to presume that all parents are abusers,” he said. “So, we need to keep this information from all of them and that makes no sense at all.”
In a separate incident in California, Spreckels Union School District in Monterey County settled last year for $100,000 with a mother who said her daughter was “socially transitioned” to a boy at school without her knowledge.
California also notably became a “sanctuary state” in 2023 for “transgender kids” seeking drugs and surgeries to alter their physical manifestations of secondary sex characteristics, which are restricted in some states.
Last year, California lawmakers tried to go even further, passing a bill that would allow courts to consider a parent’s affirmation of a child’s “gender identity” in custody cases. In a surprising move, Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed the legislation.
Katherine Hamilton is a political reporter for Breitbart News. You can follow her on X @thekat_hamilton.
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