California Gov. Gavin Newsom has signed legislation that bans teachers and school staff from informing parents if their children start to go by a new gender identity. The battle between conservative school boards and liberal state governments to do away with a mandate where parents need to be notified by the school if their child begins to show interest in a transgender lifestyle has been ongoing for the better part of 12 months, with school boards voicing parents’ concerns about keeping secrets about vulnerable youths from their parents.Parents across the state widely complained that it is critical for them to be informed if their child changes their name or pronouns, or if a child wants to plan on a sports team or other recreational activity that doesn’t match their biological gender. Under the new law, AB 1955, teachers are protected if they do not inform parents of their child’s changing identity, forbidding the formerly established “forced disclosure” rules, the LA Times reported. The bill also requires California Department of Education staff to make available to both parents and students resources on how to “manage conversations about gender and identity privately.”Newsom’s new bill comes in the wake of lawsuits pertaining to transgender disclosure to parents in Chino Valley and Temecula school districts, which have proven to generate tension to do with student privacy rights. California Attorney General Rob Bonta said requiring parents to be informed could cause “imminent, irreparable harm” to youths who identify as transgender. Indiana, Tennessee and eight other states since 2020 have passed required school gender notification policies, per data from the Movement Advancement Project. California by contrast would be the first to go the opposite direction. The bill’s author, Assembly member Chris Ward said teachers are not “the gender police” and denied that the new law undermines parental authority. “Politically motivated attacks on the rights, safety, and dignity of transgender, nonbinary, and other LGBTQ+ youth are on the rise nationwide, including in California,” Ward said in a statement per the Times. “As a parent, I urge all parents to talk to their children, listen to them, and love them unconditionally for who they are.”Harmeet Dhillon, chief executive and founder of the Center for American Liberty, said parents should be informed of the goings-on in their child’s life, and the bill takes away from that. “AB 1955 is an outrageous attempt to keep parents in the dark while schools indoctrinate kids with radical gender ideology,” said Dhillon.
