The state of California can’t stop public school teachers from informing parents about how their children are expressing their gender identity on campus, a California federal judge ruled late last month.
In a December 22 decision, U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez held that doing so would violate the due process rights of parents as well as violate the First Amendment speech and religious rights of parents and teachers.
“When it comes to a student’s change in gender identity, California state policymakers apparently do not trust parents to do the right thing for their child,” Benitez wrote. “So, the state purposefully interferes with a parent’s access to meaningful information about their child’s gender identity choices.”
The ruling also issued an injunction barring California public school employees from misleading parents about their children’s gender presentation at school.
The state quickly appealed the ruling, and a federal appeals court paused on-the-ground enforcement as it continues to consider a longer-term stay.
“LGBTQ students will suffer profound harms,” the state argued in a late-December brief seeking an emergency stay. “Outing transgender students to their parents before they are ready threatens severe mental and emotional anguish, depression, and in extreme cases, even suicide.”
Some religious advocates celebrated the decision.
“Parents do not give up their God-given rights and responsibilities when they put their children on the school bus or drop them off in the carpool line,” Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission interim president Gary Hollingsworth told Baptist Press, adding “[I]t is parents who have the responsibility to teach their children spiritual and moral values – not the state. Time and time again, the Supreme Court has agreed with that position.”
The underlying suit began in 2023, when a pair of religious San Diego County public schoolteachers challenged state guidelines that warned disclosing the transgender status of students without permission could violate state anti-discrimination law and privacy rights.
The suit later widened into a class action featuring both teachers and parents who said the guidance violated their rights.
Benitez’s ruling cited the recent Supreme Court decision in Mahmoud v. Taylor, which held that a Maryland school district burdened parents’ religious rights by not giving them notice or the ability to opt their children out of instruction involving LGBTQ+-inclusive books.
Though it touches on related subjects, the California case was not related to AB 1955, a 2024 state law that prohibits schools from requiring that staff disclose students’ sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression, a practice known as “forced outing.”
Fifteen states have some form of forced outing law regarding transgender students, according to the Movement Advancement Project, an advocacy group.
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