California can't allow schools to hide gender identity of kids from their parents, judge rules
California public schools cannot deny parents information about the preferred gender identity of their children, a United States district court has ruled.
U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez of the Southern District of California, a George W. Bush appointee, issued an order on Monday granting a permanent injunction against California Department of Education policies that prohibit schools from informing parents their children are using different names and pronouns without the child's consent.
Benitez ordered state officials and their employees to refrain from “misleading the parent or guardian of a minor child in the education system about their child’s gender presentation at school." The judge said schools may not do things like "directly lying to the parent,” “preventing the parent from accessing educational records of the child,” or “using a different set of preferred pronouns/names when speaking with the parents than is being used at school.”
The order also prohibits California school employees from using “a name or pronoun to refer to that child that do not match the child’s legal name and natal pronouns, where a child’s parent or legal guardian has communicated their objection to such use.”
Education officials were also ordered to prominently place a statement in training materials and other state-approved or created instruction emphasizing these points.
“Parents and guardians have a federal constitutional right to be informed if their public school student child expresses gender incongruence,” reads the court-ordered statement.
“Teachers and school staff have a federal constitutional right to accurately inform the parent or guardian of their student when the student expresses gender incongruence. These federal constitutional rights are superior to any state or local laws, state or local regulations, or state or local policies to the contrary.”
In 2024, California passed a bill prohibiting school districts from requiring school officials to share information about a student's sexual orientation and gender identity with the child's parent without the child's consent, drawing strong criticism from parental rights advocates. Voting for the bill fell along party lines.
Mat Staver, founder and chairman of the Florida-based Christian conservative legal group Liberty Counsel, celebrated the judge's decision in a statement on Tuesday, declaring that “parents have the right to direct the upbringing of their children.”
“Public schools have no business keeping harmful secrets from parents. Requiring teachers to be dishonest with parents in the course of their job was an unconscionable decision by California school officials,” stated Staver.
“Gender secrecy policies put teachers and parents at odds when they should be united toward a child’s well-being. All parental exclusion policies should be eliminated nationwide.”
The class-action suit was brought by two public school teachers, Elizabeth Mirabelli and Lori West, who opposed the policies because of their sincerely held Christian beliefs about gender and honesty.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta, a Democrat, filed a request for a stay on the injunction, arguing that the challenged measures enforce "longstanding state laws that protect vulnerable transgender and gender nonconforming students."
“If the Orders are allowed to stay in effect before the Court of Appeals has a chance to review them, they would irrevocably alter the status quo and will create chaos and confusion among students, parents, teachers, and staff at California’s public schools,” read the request.
“And this chaos and confusion would arise several days before the Christmas holiday. Absent at least a brief stay, Defendants will be forced to seek an emergency stay from the Ninth Circuit, just before Christmas, requiring that Court and its employees to spend time on the emergency over a state and federal holiday.”
