Another California school district considers policy of outing transgender students
Another Southern California school district is considering adoption of a policy that would require school staff to out transgender students to their parents.
On Thursday, the Murrieta Valley Unified School District board will take up the measure, less than a month after the nearby Chino Valley Unified School District board voted to do the same. The action prompted California’s attorney general to launch a civil rights investigation.
The Murrieta proposal has yet to be shared with the public, but school board President Paul Diffley told the Press-Enterprise that Chino Valley Unified’s policy would be “an interesting guide” for what the board could do.
Diffley did not respond to The Bee’s request for comment by deadline.
Diffley introduced the measure along with board member Nick Pardue, a conservative Christian elected with the support of a conservative political action committee last fall, the Press-Enterprise reported.
The Chino Valley board policy that inspired this proposal requires that teachers and other school staff notify parents if their child begins using a different name or pronouns while at school, participates in school programs like sports or uses bathrooms that do not correspond with the sex on the child’s birth certificate.
If the Murrieta Valley board enacts a similar policy, it will be in direct conflict with the California Department of Education, whose legal guidance to school districts calls for protecting the gender identity of students who may not be out at home.
“The right of transgender students to keep their transgender status private is grounded in California’s anti-discrimination laws as well as federal and state laws. Disclosing that a student is transgender without the student’s permission may violate California’s anti-discrimination law by increasing the student’s vulnerability to harassment and may violate the student’s right to privacy,” according to CDE guidance.
A federal judge in Sacramento last month seemingly upheld that guidance when he dismissed a lawsuit challenging Chico Unified School District’s policy of protecting students’ gender identity privacy.
The Chino Valley and Murrieta Valley schools are close to the Assembly district represented by Republican Assemblyman Bill Essayli. He introduced Assembly Bill 1314, which would have enacted a statewide parental notification law.
“Parents are not spectators of their kids. They’re parents, and responsible for their well-being,” Essayli told The Bee shortly after his bill was introduced.
It died without a committee hearing.
Assemblyman Al Muratsuchi, a Torrance Democrat who chairs the Assembly Education Committee, said in a statement that he was blocking the bill from consideration because it was “bad policy” that would “potentially provide a forum for increasingly hateful rhetoric targeting LGBTQ youth.”
Despite that setback, Essayli has continued to champion parental notification from his perch in the Legislature.
When Attorney General Rob Bonta announced a civil rights investigation into Chino Valley Unified School District over its decision, Essayli sent the attorney general a letter demanding to know what legal justification supported that action.
“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,” Essayli wrote in his letter.
The Murrieta Valley Unified School District board meets at 5 p.m. on Thursday.