A California school district cannot require its employees to disclose a student’s sexual orientation or gender identity to their parents, a new law says.
Assembly Bill 1955, signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom July 15, became law Jan. 1. The law was challenged in federal court July 16 by Chino Valley Unified School District, which started its own parental notification policy.
The new law says:
An employee or a contractor of a school district, county office of education, charter school, or state special school for the blind or the deaf shall not be required to disclose any information related to a pupil’s sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression to any other person without the pupil’s consent unless otherwise required by state or federal law.
(The previous section) does not constitute a change in, but is declaratory of, existing law.
Author and Assemblymember Chris Ward (D-San Diego) said the bill would allow students to have conversations with their parents on their own terms.
“Forced outing policies harm everyone, parents, families and school staff by unnecessarily compelling the staff to involve themselves in family matters and removing the opportunities for families to be able to build trust and have conversations on their own terms. Although many LGBTQ youth have supportive families, some, unfortunately, continue to face rejection and are exposed to serious harm if prematurely forced to reveal their identity. Young people thrive when they have parental support, of course, and feel safe sharing their authentic selves at home,” Ward said.
A fact sheet for the legislature’s LGBTQ caucus references a Constitutional right to privacy: “Courts have affirmed that young people have a right to keep personal information private. Under existing law, school staff are prohibited from outing students unless they have the student’s consent or are required to in a limited set of circumstances under state or federal law.”
Opposition
Chino Valley Unified School Board President Sonja Shaw spoke against the bill in Sacramento, disputing the existence of a prior law granting privacy rights.
“For 10 years, the (California Department of Education) has misled schools, falsely claiming that teachers must withhold information from parents, citing a non-existent state law granting children privacy rights against their own parents. Yet there is no such law. Schools were convinced to deceive parents, but were caught in that lie. Teachers and parents sued, and our board, along with a few others, implemented a policy against deceiving parents. You didn’t like that. So you wrote AB 1955,” Shaw said.
In her testimony, Shaw said that the school district informed 12 parents of their children’s transgender identity before the law was stopped due to a lawsuit from Attorney General Rob Bonta.
The lawsuit
On July 16, Chino Valley Unified School District sued California in federal court, claiming violation of parental rights, violation of their free exercise of religion and violation of the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act.
The complaint cites the 2000 case Troxel v. Granville, about child visitation rights, as a source of constitutional right to make decisions concerning the “care, custody and control of their children.”
The complaint cites the 1972 case Wisconsin v. Yoder, about the compulsory education of Amish children. Co-plaintiffs in the suit identify themselves as devout Christians who believe God created man and woman as distinct, immutable genders.
“(The individual plaintiff’s) religious beliefs require that they be notified if their child requests to socially transition at school so that they may be involved with their child’s treatment at school,” their complaint says.
The state has a pending motion to dismiss the case.
Case information
Case No. CIVSB2317301
Federal Case No. 2:24-cv-01941
Read the school district’s complaint here.
Read our previous coverage:
State sues Chino schools over gender notification
Judge halts Chino school’s parent notification of gender policy
