SACRAMENTO, Calif. — A law signed by California Gov. Gavin Newsom says that school districts can’t make rules that say they have to tell parents if their child wants to change their gender identity.
The law doesn’t allow school staff to tell anyone else about a student’s sexual orientation or gender identity without the child’s approval. Supporters of the bill say it will help protect LGBTQ+ kids who live in homes that don’t accept them. But people who are against it say it will make it harder for schools to be open with parents.
The rule comes at a time when local school districts and the rights of parents and LGBTQ+ students are being debated all over the country.
Assemblymember Chris Ward, a Democrat from San Diego, California, brought up the bill because he saw what he called a “growing national attack” on LGBTQ people.
Ward said on the Assembly floor last month, “Although many LGBTQ youth have families that are supportive, some unfortunately continue to face rejection and are at risk of serious harm if they are forced to reveal their identity too soon.”
More than a dozen public school districts across the state had planned or already had “forced outing policies” that put transgender, nonbinary, and other LGBTQ+ youth “at risk” by violating their privacy, his office said in a May statement for the bill.
The rules say that parents must be told if their child wants to change how they identify as a gender. Democrats in the state said no to that because they say kids have the right to privacy.
Last year, California Attorney General Rob Bonta sued the Chino Valley Unified School District in San Bernardino County to fight a program like this. Since then, the district has changed its policy so that parents must be told when a student wants to change their school records, but not when they want to change their pronouns.
But Jonathan Zachreson, a Californian advocate for so-called parental notification policies, is against the law. He said that telling parents when a student wants to change their gender identity is “critical to the well-being of children and for maintaining that trust between schools and parents.”
