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…
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