California’s attorney general on Monday sued a local school district in a bid to block a new policy that requires teachers to notify parents if their children identify as transgender or use a name or pronoun different than what is on their birth certificates at school.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta in a lawsuit filed in San Bernardino County Superior Court argued that the policy the Chino Valley Unified School District Board of Education approved in July infringes on LGBTQ students’ civil rights.
“The forced outing policy wrongfully endangers the physical, mental, and emotional well-being of non-conforming students who lack an accepting environment in the classroom and at home,” Bonta, a Democrat, said in a statement.
Andi Johnston, a spokesperson for the nearly 26,000-student school district about 35 miles east of Los Angeles, said it is “working with its legal counsel to review the lawsuit and its contents.”
The lawsuit is the first Bonta has filed after a handful of school districts in conservative pockets of his blue state adopted similar parental disclosure policies.
It comes as Republican-led bids to limit transgender rights by imposing bans on gender-affirming care and barring transgender athletes from girls and women’s sports across the country are increasingly being challenged.
The Chino Valley school board last month approved a policy requiring parents to be told if a child asks to “identified or treated” as a gender other than the student’s “biological sex or gender listed on the student’s birth certificate or any other official records.”
The board’s president, Sonja Shaw, is a Republican who has been outspoken in favor of the policy, appearing on Fox News to speak out on the “right to be involved in our children’s upbringing.”
Parents would also be notified if a student took part in sex-segregated school sports or used bathrooms that did not align with the child’s sex assigned at birth or ask to change any information in their records.
Bonta in Monday’s lawsuit argued the policy violates the California Constitution by infringing on the students’ equal protection rights by unlawfully discriminating against transgender and gender nonconforming students by singling them out to different and unfavorable treatment.
The lawsuit alleges the policy also infringes on those students’ constitutional right to privacy by mandating that school officials “out” them against their wishes and violates state anti-discrimination laws.
The lawsuit seeks to block the district from enforcing the policy and to have a court declare it unlawful.
The case is People of California v. Chino Valley Unified School District, San Bernardino County Superior Court, California, No. Unknown.