‘Children belong to their parents.’ California lawmaker challenges civil rights investigation

Good morning and welcome to the A.M. Alert!

ESSAYLI DEMANDS JUSTIFICATION FOR CIVIL RIGHTS INVESTIGATION

Assemblyman Bill Essayli, R-Riverside, challenged California Attorney General Rob Bonta on Monday to provide a legal justification for his Department of Justice civil rights investigation into the Chino Valley Unified School District board’s decision to enact a policy of outing transgender students to their parents.

As previously reported in The Bee, the Southern California school district this summer voted in favor of a policy that requires teachers and other school staff to inform parents if their child requests to go by a different name or pronoun, or if they use a bathroom or participate in school programs (such as sports) that don’t match their sex on official records.

The school board’s decision mirrors a bill, AB 1314, which Essayli authored earlier this year. That bill would have required every school in the state to adopt a similar policy, but never made it to a committee hearing.

Assembly Education Committee Chair Al Muratsuchi, D-Torrance, called the bill “bad policy” and said that a hearing for it “would potentially provide a forum for increasingly hateful rhetoric targeting LGBTQ youth.”

In his letter to Bonta, Essayli wrote that the California Department of Education’s guidance to schools to protect the privacy of transgender and gender-nonconforming students who may not be out at home is “faulty advice ... suggesting that students possess a legally cognizable privacy interest from their parents.”

Essayli wrote that by protecting the privacy of transgender students, schools are “increasingly implementing illegal, unconstitutional and unethical policies that exclude parents from the affairs of their children.”

Last month, a federal judge in Sacramento ruled that the State of California has a legitimate interest in protecting the privacy of transgender students who may suffer “adverse hostile reactions, including, but not limited to, domestic abuse and bullying” if outed, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

Surveys show that only a third of transgender students report having a safe and affirming home environment.

In his letter, Essayli demanded to know whether Bonta’s DOJ also would investigate school districts that violate the civil rights of parents.

“Without a transparent accounting of your department’s actions, I will be left to conclude that your announcement was designed to chill the political activities of local school boards who disagree with the narrative of the ruling political party in Sacramento. I sincerely hope that is not the case,” Essayli wrote.

In a tweet announcing his letter, Essayli wrote that “children belong to their parents, not the government.”

That prompted one person to reply, “Children don’t belong to anyone. It’s not the 19th Century, children aren’t possessions.”

Reached for comment, Bonta’s office said that Essayli’s letter is “currently under review.”

QUOTE OF THE DAY

“Florida’s latest curriculum — featuring cartoon Christopher Columbus explaining, ‘being taken as a slave is better than being killed!’ and telling time-traveling kids that slavery was ‘no big deal.’ This is the kind of propaganda DeSantis and his friends at PragerU are teaching our children.”

- California Gov. Gavin Newsom, via the platform formerly known as Twitter.

Best of The Bee:

• Fast food chains have spent millions this year on lobbying and advertising campaigns to stave off a bill that would hold corporate owners responsible for abuses that occur at franchise restaurants, according to a Sacramento Bee analysis, via Lindsey Holden, Mathew Miranda and Stephen Hobbs.

• Sacramento District Attorney Thien Ho’s office has decided to freeze out a Superior Court judge from hearing any criminal cases coming from its prosecutors, employing a rule that allows them to reject a judge for being prejudiced against their interests, via Sam Stanton.

• Members of Congress representing the San Joaquin Valley, a farming-reliant region with some of the worst air quality and poorest health in California, have introduced a series of bills in the last few weeks intended to attract and keep more physicians, via Gillian Brassil.

• The California governor says he’s not running, not in 2024 or any other year. Yet, quietly but aggressively, Newsom is following the playbook for White House aspirants, via David Lightman.

This story was originally published August 8, 2023 at 4:55 AM.