A battle is brewing over an effort to have voters decide whether all California schools should notify parents if their child may be transgender.
From the steps of the Capitol Wednesday, the first day of the 2024 legislative session, the Protect Kids California group announced a lawsuit challenging Attorney General Rob Bonta’s title and summary language he gave to their proposed ballot initiative.
If passed by voters, the measure would require schools to notify parents if their student, under the age of 18, requests to be treated as a gender different from school records. It would also revoke the California education code that allows students to play on sports teams that align with their chosen gender identity, and it would ban gender-affirming health care for minors.
Bonta’s office did not respond to a request for comment Wednesday.
Dubbed parental notification policies, these mandates for how schools must inform parents if their child may be transgender have already been adopted by several districts in Southern California, including Temecula Valley Unified, Chino Valley Unified, Orange Unified and Placentia-Yorba Linda Unified.
While they may differ slightly, these policies essentially require a school staff member to inform parents if their child requests to use different names or pronouns or asks to change sex-segregated programs like athletic teams or changing facilities that differ from the student’s assigned biological sex at birth.
In Orange County’s Placentia-Yorba Linda Unified, the policy focused on mental health, saying a designated school counselor would notify a student’s family “when they have reasonable cause to believe that doing so will avert a clear and present danger to the health, safety or welfare” of students.
The proposed ballot initiative would require all public and private schools and colleges to adhere to the notification mandate, according to Jay Reed, a spokesperson for Protect Kids California.
The ballot initiative was submitted by Protect Kids California to Bonta’s office last year. He was then required to prepare the legal title and summary that would appear on the initiative’s petition.
The petition was cleared to start collecting signatures on Nov. 29 and was titled the “Restricts Rights of Transgender Youth” initiative by Bonta.
The fiscal summary says the initiative will result in “minor savings in state and local health care costs” and could also lead to unknown fiscal penalties if federally-funded schools and health care providers are found to be out of compliance with federal law.
Protect Kids California took issue with the title and summary Bonta gave, saying it “intentionally misrepresented the purpose of the initiative effort to discourage voters from supporting efforts to protect California children.”
“We find the attorney general’s title and summary for our proposed initiative laughable,” said Jonathan Zachreson, the leader of Protect Kids California. “Not only is the attorney general showing his bias, but he is also factually inaccurate.”
“Our mission is to protect all kids across the state,” said Zachreson. “It’s pretty simple.”
Bonta has publicly opposed these types of notification policies that districts have enacted.
In August, he sued the Chino Valley Unified School District in San Bernardino County, alleging that its parental notification policy violated the law by “infringing on multiple state protections safeguarding students’ civil and constitutional rights.”
The district’s policy, he said at the time, could cause “mental, emotional, psychological and potential physical harm to LGBTQ+ students.”
He sent letters to other districts considering similar mandates — including Temecula Valley Unified and Murrieta Valley Unified — warning them of potential legal action as well.
A San Bernardino Superior Court judge issued a temporary injunction in September, meaning the district is prevented, for now, from enforcing any aspect of the policy. Judge Michael Sachs said that the policy’s provisions on outing transgender students to their parents are discriminatory based on sex, violating the Constitution’s equal protection clause.
The issue is still moving through the legal system.
But supporters of the policy say parents have a right to know these details about their children.
“Parent notification is common sense,” said Reed. “It is not okay for school administrators and teachers to keep secrets from parents. Not only are we encouraged by districts that have taken up parent notification policies but (we) question why other districts aren’t putting common sense before political ideology.”
To get the initiative before voters on the November general election ballot, Protect Kids California must collect 546,651 signatures. The signatures must be submitted no later than May 28.
Reed said that the group is receiving thousands of petition signatures a week and that voters from over 30 counties have already signed the petition.