Judge Blocks California District’s Rule Requiring Schools to Out Transgender Students

From the San Francisco Chronicle

Bob Egelko

A judge barred a Southern California school district Thursday from requiring teachers to notify parents when a student identifies as transgender, saying the policy discriminates against youths based on their gender identity.

The policy adopted by the Chino Valley Unified School District in July — the first of its kind in the state — “treats otherwise similar students differently based on their sex or gender identity” and therefore violate the constitutional guarantee of equal protection of the laws, said San Bernardino County Superior Court Judge Michael Sachs. He granted Attorney General Rob Bonta’s request for a preliminary injunction against the policy, which had been blocked by another judge last month.

At the school board’s four-hour hearing before it adopted the policy in July, Sachs noted, board members who supported it described gender nonconformity as a “mental illness” and the board’s president, Sonja Shaw, told state schools Superintendent Tony Thurmond that he was supporting “things that pervert children.”

Emily Rae, a lawyer for the school district, told Sachs that children’s decisions to change their gender identity “raise major health concerns about which parents have a right to know.”

“Socially transitioning behind their parents' backs does not promote well-being,” said attorney Josh Dixon of the Center for American Liberty, a conservative group representing parents who support the district’s policy.

But at the end of a 2 ½-hour hearing Thursday, Sachs told the lawyers that “I do not accept that making the choice, if it’s even a choice, of being transgender is a mental health problem.” He said a transgender child might also conclude that mandatory parental notification “would have a chilling effect on my ability to express myself” and decide to stay in the closet.

Some transgender youths can discuss their gender identity with their parents, some cannot, and “my job as a judge is to have their backs,” Sachs said.

He allowed Chino Valley to enforce one part of its policy, notifying parents when students seek to change any information in their official school records. But he blocked the more significant provision that would require parental notification when a student asks to be addressed by a different name or pronoun, to be treated in any other way than their birth gender or takes other actions indicating transgender status such as using a different restroom or entering a different athletic program.

Rae maintained that the school district “is not discriminating based on gender,” but is simply requiring teachers to notify parents when a child makes a request for “treatment” — the district’s term for recognition of a new gender status. The district could ask a state appeals court to overturn the judge’s injunction, which otherwise will remain in effect until the case goes to trial.

The state’s lawsuit cites regulations by the Department of Education, led by Thurmond which tell schools to let students decide who, if anyone, should be informed of their gender identity. The regulations followed a 2015 California law that requires schools to allow transgender students to take part in all programs and to use restrooms and other facilities consistent with their gender identity.

The dispute has also reached federal courts, where judges have issued conflicting rulings.

In July, U.S. District Judge John Mendez of Sacramento rejected a conservative group’s lawsuit against a Butte County school district that enforced the state policy, ruling that the state has a legitimate interest in protecting transgender students from “adverse hostile actions, including, but not limited to, domestic abuse and bullying.”

But in September, U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez of San Diego said the state and a local school district were violating “a parent’s right to make decisions concerning the care, custody, control and medical care of their children” by refusing to notify parents of a child’s change in gender identity without the youth’s consent. The federal rulings are being appealed to the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, and the issue could eventually reach the Supreme Court.

Thursday’s case, the first to reach a California state court, involves a 26,000-student district in a relatively conservative area. After the Chino Valley district’s general counsel, Anthony DeMarco, told board members that the state’s regulations were non-binding “guidance” rather than law, board members voted 4-1 to ignore the regulations — which one member, Andrew Cruz, described as part of a “death culture from the left” — and require teachers to inform parents that students have identified as transgender or are questioning their gender identity.

After Bonta’s office sued the district, Superior Court Judge Thomas Garza granted the state a temporary restraining order Sept. 6 halting the local policy while the case was pending. The district then filed papers to remove Garza from the case and it was reassigned to Sachs, who, like Garza, was initially appointed to the bench by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

At Thursday’s hearing, Deputy Attorney General Delbert Tran told Garza that the state regulations allow schools to “partner with parents and inform them, with the student’s consent.” Students, Tran contended, have a right to make “their own decision to speak to parents when they’re emotionally ready.”

The district’s policy, Tran said, “has the effect … of shoving students into the closet and having the door shut.”

Rae, an attorney from the conservative Liberty Justice Center representing the school district, countered that “parents are the legal guardians of their minor children, not the government. … As a society, we trust parents first and foremost, not the state, to make decisions for their children.”

The ruling was praised by Kristi Hirst, a former Chino Valley teacher teacher who cofounded the advocacy group Our Schools USA.

“It’s embarrassing that this school board chooses to ignore the harm they are causing in Chino and in communities throughout California in order to pursue a political crusade,” she said.

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