California Tries to Put the State Above Parents

National Review Online

Tuesday, September 05, 2023

 

Adults who keep secrets with other people’s children violate commonsense safeguards of minors and must be stopped. Shamefully, this is exactly the kind of behavior California’s attorney general, Rob Bonta, seeks to enable.

 

Last Monday, Bonta sued a Southern California school district over its new policy that sensibly requires schools to notify parents within three days when their child requests to be treated as the opposite (or neither) sex.

 

In his filing, Bonta alleges that the Chino Valley Unified School District “singled out an especially vulnerable group of children and youth for discriminatory treatment: transgender and gender nonconforming students.”

 

Bonta is correct that young people confused or distressed by their sex are a vulnerable population. They are at higher risk of mental-health problems. They are also at high risk of being ushered down an irreversible medical pathway that can result in sterility and sexual dysfunction. That’s precisely why their parents’ involvement in all aspects of their care is so critical. And why it is so dangerous to drive a wedge between these children and their families.

 

Yet, time and time again, that is what transgender activists across the country have done. Take the case of the Littlejohn family, in Tallahassee, Fla., who say they informed their daughter’s school that they did not consent to social transition, only to learn later that school personnel had been having secret meetings with their 13-year-old, asking which restroom she wanted to use and which sex she wanted to stay with on overnight trips.

 

Or the Perez family in Jacksonville, Fla., whose twelve-year-old daughter secretly met with a school counselor for months to discuss her transgender identity. Mr. and Mrs. Perez allege they were told only after their daughter twice tried to kill herself at school that they had been excluded from these discussions because of their Catholic faith, which the counselor presumed would make them opposed to transgenderism.

 

It was in response to horror stories such as these that Florida Republicans and Governor Ron DeSantis enshrined parental rights into state law. Regardless of the “Don’t Say Gay” smear campaign, the Parental Rights in Education Act enjoyed public support, even among Democratic voters.

 

We are seeing similar pushback in California. In January, a mother filed a lawsuit against the Chico Unified School District in Northern California, alleging that her daughter’s school had been surreptitiously transitioning her child. The mother told Fox News that the school had been recommending “support groups in town” to assist her daughter’s transition, as well as the sinister practice of “breast binding.”

 

Data from Rasmussen Reports show that 84 percent of California voters would support a law requiring schools to notify parents about “any major change in a child’s physical, mental, or emotional health or academic performance,” while 68 percent of those surveyed opposed “teachers and school administrators keeping information about a child’s gender identity secret from parents.”

 

Attorney General Bonta said Chino Valley Unified School District’s so-called forced-outing policy threatened students with “mental, emotional, psychological and potential physical harm.”

 

But harm inflicted by whom? Their parents? Bonta claimed that for trans-identifying youth, “school serves as their only safe haven — a place away from home where they can find validation, safety, privacy.” His poisonous insinuation is that non-affirmation of a declared gender identity is equivalent to abuse.

 

Of course, when real child abuse is suspected, school staff may delay notifying parents until police or child services have investigated the concern. But they leave the decision-making about the child’s future to the relevant authorities. Yet when mere non-affirmation is suspected, schools jump straight to playing judge, parent, and psychologist. This is a dangerous precedent. If parents can be usurped at school, why not at home, too?

 

“We will stand our ground,” Sonja Shaw, the Chino Valley Unified president, said. “Parents have a constitutional right in the upbringing of their children. Period.”

 

As that right comes under sustained attacks, lawmakers must fight to protect it.