California City Strikes Back at State Law Requiring Schools to Keep Secrets From Parents
Lawsuit: California’s “SAFETY” Act banning parental notification when a child is trans is an unconstitutional intrusion on the autonomy of Huntington Beach, a “Parents’ Right to Know” city.
A lawsuit brought by the City of Huntington Beach against California officials is opening a new front in the battle over secret social transitioning in the state’s public schools.
Parents aren’t the only ones fed up with the state usurping their authority. Huntington Beach is suing to protect its power to govern—as a self-proclaimed “Parents’ Right to Know” city—free from the state’s law that forbids parental notification when a student says they belong to the opposite sex.
Huntington Beach is one of California’s many charter cities, and as such, it claims the state’s constitution protects its autonomy.
The California public school system is a hotbed of gender indoctrination:
California schools are recruiting 5th graders and having them teach kindergartners how to be gender nonconforming. It’s more effective than the teachers doing it. pic.twitter.com/TysocaUxFI
— Richard Hanania (@RichardHanania) May 25, 2024
Los Angeles Unified School District has mainlined academic Queer Theory in the K-12 school system, encouraging children as young as kindergarten to experiment with synthetic sexual identities such as "trans," "genderqueer," "pansexual," and "two-spirit."pic.twitter.com/SkXWJepKpS
— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) July 22, 2022
So it’s no wonder court battles over California’s transgender notification policies are breaking out in all directions. The pervasive gender indoctrination may also explain why, according to the lawsuit, the number of youth in California who identify as transgender is almost three times the national average.
In California, as elsewhere, all the child has to do is ask, and the school will begin using a new name and new pronouns, allow access to opposite-sex restroom facilities, and make other social changes without the parents’ knowledge or consent. The schools routinely claim this “secret social transitioning” policy is necessary to keep kids safe—from their own parents.
But, as the lawsuit also points out, social transitioning is the gateway to medical transitioning, with life-altering, permanent consequences. It is really a mental health or medical intervention, the complaint alleges, one that parents should be informed about as they would with any medical intervention involving their child.
Parental gender notification policies have been challenged throughout the country, as we’ve covered here. Typically, parents sue, claiming these policies violate their rights to be informed about their children’s wellbeing. In other cases, teachers unwilling to sell their souls to keep their jobs challenge policies that force them to look a girl in the eye and call her a “he.”
In these cases, the state is on defense against parents or teachers suing to vindicate their rights.
But in California, the state has turned on its own. Last year, when local districts defied its transgender notification bans, which then had the status of “guidance,” the state sued its own school boards—and by extension, the parents who elected them—to assert its authority. The state successfully blocked enforcement of the local parental notification policy in the case we covered here.
This past July, Governor Gavin Newsom doubled down when he signed AB 1955, the “Support Academic Futures and Educators for Today’s Youth Act or SAFETY Act.”
As usual, the title of the Act belies its true purpose, unless you think children need to be protected from their own parents to be “safe” from “forced outing.” The law now bans school districts from creating policies requiring staff to notify parents of their children’s gender identity. It also prohibits the school from taking action against staff involved in social transitioning. The Act effectively overrides those earlier school board initiatives to restore parents’ rights by turning what was “guidance” into a mandate.
The so-called SAFETY Act was the last straw for Elon Musk, who announced he was moving his SpaceX company to Texas in protest:
This is the final straw.
Because of this law and the many others that preceded it, attacking both families and companies, SpaceX will now move its HQ from Hawthorne, California, to Starbase, Texas. https://t.co/cpWUDgBWFe
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 16, 2024
And in Huntington Beach, city leaders were outraged. The municipality has joined a group of parents to challenge the California law. They ask the court to declare the “SAFETY” Act unconstitutional and block its enforcement.
Huntington Beach joins a growing list of municipalities openly defying the new Act slated to go into effect on January 1 of next year. The day it filed its lawsuit, it also passed an ordinance declaring itself a “Parents’ Right to Know” city, a direct challenge to the new law.
Huntington Beach argues that as a charter city, it’s authorized by the state Constitution to govern itself free of legislative intrusion into its municipal affairs. Those include protecting the rights of parents in its jurisdiction to know about their child’s gender identity, without the interference of the state.
From the complaint:
In short, AB 1955 makes it harder for schools to prevent secret social transitioning, harming parents, children, and communities. That’s because a child with gender dysphoria often has other mental health issues. To help their child, parents need to know what is going on. Imagine the outrage if parents were kept in the dark about a child’s epileptic seizures at school and the treatment being provided that child by school employees for that condition
The families who join Huntington Beach as plaintiffs in the lawsuit include children who, unbeknownst to their parents or even against their express wishes, were either indoctrinated with gender ideaology or actively socially “transitioned” by meddling school staff. They are all at-risk targets, coming from broken or dysfunctional homes and presenting with a host of mental health issues including autism, depression and ADHD.
They make a convincing case for treating gender identity as a “personal and private issue” between the child and the parent, not the state.
As the United States Supreme Court famously observed almost a hundred years ago, “the child is not the mere creature of the state.”
The lawsuit says neither are California’s charter cities. They are a “creature” of the California constitution, and like parents, they should be allowed to govern their own municipal affairs without the state’s intrusion.
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Comments
transgender is a mental disease.
Being a public school employee is an even worse mental disease.
My good friend is going through a divorce. A few years ago her daughter had an incident in middle school and some counseling with the guidance counselor. She went to the school to get the records as part of an upcoming custody hearing. They refused to give her the records of HER child. Said it was confidential. They aren’t required to disclose information on the kids. This is in PA.
I pulled my children from public schools after my middle daughter was unlawfully detained along with the rest of her class on suspicion of having stolen a laptop that was later found to have been misplaced by her idiot teacher (and by calling her an idiot I’m being gracious). Only after my daughter’s backpack was searched in the presence of a police officer was she allowed to leave. Civil rights, WTF are those?
My children were pulled from school the next day. We homeschooled them from that point on.
My wife is the brains of our outfit (summa cum laude Boston College) so she did most of the teaching.
In case you’re curious, all three now have bachelor degrees, one with a masters and one beginning graduate studies. (Higher ed has it’s problems too)
The public school model in the United States is broken and cannot be fixed. The collusion between the bloated administration and the criminally corrupt unions make it impossible.
Good for your family. However, for most people, home schooling is not an option. Catholic schools can work. You do not have to be a Catholic and it can be affordable – about $7,500 per child in my town for a parishioner, a bit more if not.
There are only two genders, male and female.
Everything else is a mental health disorder.
but this comes up at the top of the search list:
Although many are taught that there are only two sexes — male and female — that isn’t true. Some people are intersex or have a difference of sexual development (DSD).
and from the helpful professor site:
81 Types of Genders & Gender Identities (A to Z List)
81 Types of Genders & Gender Identities (A to Z List)Written by Chris Drew (PhD)
Chris Drew (PhD)
| September 9, 2023
man I guess we were taught wrong!
seriously,,,think of all the children that are not only being taught this bull
but fear saying anything different to the new authorities
“Some people are intersex”
Yeah, even fewer than the proportion of women who get abortions because of genuine threats to their life and health.
Ron Paul, gynecologist long before he was ever a senator, has declared that there is NO case where “the life of the mother’ is protected by an abortion. He oughtta know, that’s been his medical specialty for decades.
I will side with the oldes Authority in the universe.. the God who made all this. HE says He made man, “male and female created He hem”. No roomfor Option Three. HIS Word rumps all else. And if anyone were to try and press me legally I;d respond with a religious discrimination charge. Their “proof” would be amusing…. and faulty. by default.
this nonsense is naught else byt rebellious man trying to “correct” the God of the Universe.
My friend pulled his girl out of public school after she was given a chest-binder unsolicited.
This is purely political. They are recruiting future Democratic voters,
we need a new 21 jump street to go in and infiltrate the teachers lounges and create chaos against those leftists
‘… recruiting 5th graders…’
But don’t call them groomers!
The point here is that they are grooming the kids to groom younger kids. 🤬
Then they lie about it.
“Oh, we’re just playing with colors and shadows, there’s nothing gender about it.”
Sure, like a boy who enjoys wearing dresses, and a girl who “likes” girls.
Um, maybe you can gaslight fifth-graders but don’t try it on us,
I personally know a bunch of fifth and sixth grade homeschool kids. Try gaslighting them, and they will make an utter fool of you. THEY know truth… and will not hesitate to confront and prove you wrong, with sound arguments. And do it with grace and class.
Thought experiment:
Imagine a law is constitutional (i.e., within the authority of the State to do “x”). But in the law’s operation, the administrators of the law cause actual harm (let’s say psychological harm to minors) and they take measures to conceal their actions that caused the harm.
Is this injury actionable? Or is it not actionable for being constitutional? Does “lawful authority” insulate a government or its employees from civil suits for damage done under the law?
As I pointed out the last time you made this assertion, it is NOT TRUE. There is no such law in California, and the state is not suing anyone for notifying parents.
As you yourself correctly write later in this post,
That is very different from what you claimed earlier in this post, as well as in a previous post.
The state law protects a teacher’s right to choose not to notify parents. It bans government school boards, which are nothing but divisions of the state government, from forcing teachers to notify, even when the teacher thinks it’s the wrong thing to do.
The practical effect of leaving it up to each teacher is confusion and is a decision to put the thumb on the scale against what parents consider their right to know their child’s condition and raise the child as they see is appropriate. There are (or may be) issues where the government must protect children from their parents, but the parents and the city here say this is definitely not one of them
The most unbelievable part of the transgender mania is that it’s settled law that public officials, including school personnel or school boards, do NOT have the right to indoctrinate students with any kind of ideology, which transgenderism clearly is — let along keeping that indoctrination secret from the parents. This even includes indoctrination which many parents would not take exception to, like flag salutes. As Justice Robert Jackson put it, way back in 1943:
“If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein. If there are any circumstances which permit an exception, they do not now occur to us.
We think the action of the local authorities in compelling the flag salute and pledge transcends constitutional limitations on their power and invades the sphere of intellect and spirit which it is the purpose of the First Amendment to our Constitution to reserve from all official control.
The decision of this Court in Minersville School District v. Gobitis and the holdings of those few per curiam decisions which preceded and foreshadowed it are overruled, and the judgment enjoining enforcement of the West Virginia Regulation is Affirmed.”
U.S. Supreme Court: West Virginia State Board of Education et al. v. Barnette et al., 319 U.S. 624 (1943), at 642.
The perverts pushing this agenda are hoping to use their access to children to create conditions for social contagion, i.e. shared delusions spread infectiously within a vulnerable group. The Nazis used similar tactics, and unfortunately they are quite effective. This will only get worse, and won’t stop until enough parents rise up at the local school level to generate a firebreak, and that going to get really ugly in places like California.