State Attorney General Rob Bonta filed a lawsuit Monday to stop a Southern California school district from outing transgender students to their parents, arguing that the policy violates students’ civil and constitutional rights and could cause them “mental emotional, psychological, and potential physical harm.”
Bonta’s suit against the Chino Valley Unified School District is the latest attempt by Democratic state officials to combat the recent adoption of such policies by conservative school boards. The outcome of the case could have bearing on other districts that have enacted similar rules in the last two months, including Murrieta Valley, Temecula and Anderson Union High School.
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The policy passed last month by the Chino Valley Unified School Board requires schools to inform parents whenever a student asks to use a different name or pronoun than what’s in their official record, or if a student requests to use facilities or participate in programs that don’t align with their assigned sex. A similar statewide proposal, introduced by Republican Assemblymember Bill Essayli, stalled and has almost no chance of becoming law in the Democratic supermajority Legislature.
If their parents are loving and understanding individuals they would already know. It’s not the job of the school to decide when and how kids come out.
As somebody in a conservative county with kids in school, that is the point to them. They frame it as “parent’s rights” but the purpose is to try to out closeted Trans kids to their parents so the parents will “fix it”. To them it is all upside. The kids with supportive parents? They consider them a lost cause anyways. The kids with unsupportive parents they hope they can “fix”, or at least force them to hide it.
I hate “parent’s rights” so much.
What about the rights of the kid? I wish that as a kid I had more rights and support outside of just my parents. Turns out not all parents are great. And I am never not grateful for finally being an adult and actually independent and free, with my own life in my hands.
Not having enough independence as a young teenager really feels like it harms development more than anything else.
Before I go in to this, I want to clarify that when I say “children”, I’m mostly talking about teenagers. I mean it more in the “not legally an adult” sense than like…little kids. Moving on.
I think the issue isn’t parent’s rights overall, just how the concept is being used by certain groups at the moment. Some choices should be made for the child, especially when they are very young. If I wasn’t able to make choices for my children, my 14 and 12 year old would never have gotten a flu shot because they don’t like needles. That said, I don’t think the parent has the right to know EVERYTHING about their child. Kids have secrets and that is healthy. I certainly don’t think that a parent has the right to force their child to hide their gender identity or sexuality.
I am specifying all of this and pushing back because I think the problem is how the conversation is framed. A lot of this conversation is either started by right wing fundamentalists (who obviously frame it in a way to push their agenda and want children to have basically no rights) or children. The problem is, children talk about their rights and wanting freedom about dumb shit as often as they do about legitimate things. My 14 year old step-son got mad at me about his “privacy” a couple weeks ago when I went in to his bedroom while he was at his after school sport. He was big mad about me not respecting his rights. Except the reason I went in there is because we had 7 missing cups and I knew they weren’t anywhere else. One of the cups had old apple juice in it and we haven’t had apple juice in our house for at least 3 weeks. His overall point (children deserve privacy and the ability to have their own space) was valid, but I deserve to both have a cup to drink out of and also to not have fruit flies upstairs.
I think the only solution is for people who agree that kids do deserve rights and privacy and some autonomy are more vocal about it, even if they don’t have kids themselves. Because as it is now, the only people very vocally arguing against it are literal children and while they might be right overall, they don’t pick their battles wisely and it makes the entire point look silly to an outside observer. If we don’t frame the conversation around things outside observers can agree with and not to the extremes that the right wing wants to push it to AND not the extremes that the children effected by this stuff will push it too due to the naivety of youth. I think it is very easy for a parent to go "well I SHOULD be able to make decisions for my kid. My kid doesn’t know better, " if we let the argument be controlled by people who will push it to the farthest limits.
That said, I do want to specify that I think children SHOULD be part of this conversation. I know I remember being a child but I also know my children know MUCH more about it than I could possibly remember (they are living it). I also know my children can and do bring up valid points that I may not have thought of. This effects them more than anybody and if they aren’t a huge part of the conversation then we can never reach something that is actually good I think. As an adult I know I risk falling in to “well this is how it was when I was a child” or “well I know better” because that is just easier. The children keep us honest.
The high school aged trans kids I know have conservative parents. In all these cases the parents already know. In general the parents don’t like it, but they still love their kids and are hoping it’s a phase and are letting the kids figure it out on their own. The last thing any of them would want is to have a conversation with the government school about their kid’s identity. It puts them in the position to either formally bless their kids preferred names/pronouns or go to war with the kid. None of these parents would choose the latter so I really can’t see what the districts are trying to accomplish.
so I really can’t see what the districts are trying to accomplish.
The districts want to make trans kids afraid to be themselves in any context.
I find this really based and I think american teena need some social wins. Parents are spending an unbelievable amount of times with their kids nowadays, and it’s not without entitlement and without making lots of decisions for their kids.
Yeah seriously this is a basic safeguarding concern. Don’t out people. If the child wants their parents to know, they will tell them as and when they are ready.
They claim it’s “parental rights”, but these same people will not even hesitate for a MOMENT to dismiss the rights of the parents if it means interfering with conservative values. They’ll ban books the parents want their kids to access, refuse to use pronouns/identities requested by parents, proselytize children against the faith of the family (because the SCOTUS has all but abandoned the establishment clause as a limit on state-sanctioned religious activity), forbid teaching subjects like black history that parents want their children to know about, and anything else that is part of their culture war.
Conservatism is a cancer on society.
Parental rights to beat their kids for being queer.
Yup. Even in the same piece of legislation:
- Teachers cannot be forced to gender students correctly, because free speech. (The parents’ “parental rights” over how their child is addressed don’t apply)
- Teachers cannot choose to gender students correctly, because “parental rights”. (The teachers free speech rights to choose how they address the child don’t apply)
But it is worth pointing out, as much as it seems hypocritical of them to do this: Conservatives know. They do not care. It’s not hypocritical because they have never believed that the rules should ever apply to them. It’s a strategy, and it is very, very effective.
(edit: typo)
Fuck the hypocrisy makes me seethe
“Parental rights” is just another dog whistle. It’s up there with zoning laws concerning multi-family dwellings.
My liberal parents persuaded me out of transitioning as a teen, my Dad worked at the school district so there was no avoiding him finding out without my consent and without my planning to handle the backlash.
I’m sorry you had to go through that.
The regressive playbook is to make everything the responsibility of “the family” because they don’t want government telling them they can’t abuse their kids.
When that is accomplished, suddenly it will be acceptable for government to force families to do (or not) certain things. We are seeing the beginning ramp up here.
Either you have human rights or you don’t. Your parents having the right to curtail your rights means that they aren’t universal, and the government can and will be involved again once you gut enough oversight.
See also, republican states leading the charge for child marriage.
participate in programs that don’t align with their assigned sex
What exactly does that mean? Which school activities are gendered? Are they going to report male students that want to take home ec to their parents?
Clearly talking about gender-segregated sports. And the first half of that same quotation totally clarifies they will do it even if a student merely changes gender/pronounts on their official records.
This was a radical right, antitrans school board passing a policy specifically designed to antagonize and endanger trans students.
My school had gendered health classes in sixth grade.
https://daily.jstor.org/gender-incommensurability-in-sports/ An interesting take on gender separation in sports.
Seen this before. It is a great read I recommend for people.
The simple truth is, if being a trans woman were such an immense competitive advantage in sports, we would’ve seen a lot of them performing at the top levels. We should see AT LEAST the same sample representation of trans women athletes as the greater population of trans women, and indeed should see far more than that.
We don’t.
Professional sports is such an insanely elite field that we should expect any microscopic physical advantage would get multiplied into a dominating force.
Again, we don’t see this happening with trans women.
No one was even looking out for it. It could’ve slipped completely under the radar. But those elite, successful trans women athletes? They are a severely, severely underrepresented minority. Not only are they not winning left right and center – they’re barely present at all.
That’s not even facing the much more fundamental questions like “does sportsmanship really override someone’s autonomy of body and genuine identity” or “since when did we start caring about women’s sports so much that it was worth passing insane laws about it” and all the like. And also the scientific and medical fact that gender and sex are a spectrum, not a binary. A bimodal distribution for sure, but a spectrum nevertheless.
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Intermural chess.
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Chess and rifle shooting are sex segregated for the same reason: Men are afraid women will beat them on an equal playing field in public.
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Please, if they would just make a California without a housing crisis, you’d have 150 million Americans living there.
There is a serious concerted effort by right wing groups to attack several foundational programs in California. Several school districts are fighting back against ultra conservative candidates and out of area people coming in to disrupt Board meetings and trying to erode rights from vulnerable communities.
People may see California as a very blue state, but there are some very conservative/Red areas of the state between the big metro cities. (Think Trump flags everywhere)
Absolutely yes! You don’t get a housing crisis without neoliberal policies and medding from the rich. Homelessness? Politicians lacking empathy, and non-profits who game the system with corruption. There red districts in California are HUGE and even extreme blue cities are gripped by the right, kept from helping the working class. You probably know better than I do.
Which is why there is a (worse in Cali) housing crisis. Housing WAS cheap in places that people didn’t want to live. Now with WFH, people can live anywhere. Republican had to pull out all the stops to prevent normal people from moving into their states.
Same with Mass. They’re quietly doing one thing after another to help residents, but at the same time Boston is being gentrified so much that many families who’ve been there for generations can’t afford to stay. The wealth disparity gap is crushing people in every state, the red ones just try to speed that up more.
That is heartbreaking.
And a senate comprised of 98 inbred bigoted hayseeds and 2 sane people.
Is the California senate that bad? I had no idea, shit.
No, but if that many people moved to California, it would tip the balance in the US Senatorial races in the other 49 states.
Ohhhhh. Yeah, for political reasons I’m incentivized to live outside of paradise. Fucking hell.
Too bad puberty happens before children can be legally independent from their parents. Also religious confirmation, political indoctrination, and lasting physical and metal abuse in some cases. Of course, a lot of good stuff happens before that point as well. We just expect it to happen, so it doesn’t talked about as much.
Kinda seems like the “children as property” model of “parenting” is a little flawed.
Or, y’know, complete horsecrap. Could be that too.
I think in the large majority of cases, prepubescent children should have a legal guardian.
Def don’t agree with this, that’s def a slippery slope
Definitely don’t agree that children from around 8-14ish should need a legal guardian?
If I went to this school I’d be requesting new pronouns or name every day.
So infrequently? And without organizing your fellow students to do likewise and overwhelm the system?
Every 15 minutes, and an instructional song whose lyrics inform other students how they can fuck the system too?
“Why are all the students going by ‘Spartacus’ all of a sudden?”
“Before the question eacapes the office admin’s mouth ten more name change requests signal the chime on her inbox.”
“Spartacus!? Why!?”
Seriously this is funny, jokes aside though trans kids are really gonna appreciate the opportunity to have this extra bit of autonomy and safety in their lives.
Based
to combat the recent adoption of such policies by conservative school boards
If they were truly “conservative” they wouldn’t do things like this.
Right? They preach that you need freedom and the government shouldn’t have power in your life… lol…
See: Doublespeak
Going after the REAL problems we face in that state!
Imagine if they spent 1/2 as much effort on the literal dozens of people this impacts versus problems that impact all 40,000,000 residents of CA. They might actually have found a solution to their awful tent city problem or unsustainable real estate prices or high taxes by now. Priorities!1!!
Oh no, it’s impossible to do more than one thing at a time!
So why haven’t they???
If they can do more than one thing, so what has stopped them in the past?
You help the many, not the fringe minority first.
Lots of these issues stem from NIMBY cities and towns that block shelters and higher density housing from being built. There are lawsuits from the State vs. individual cities to try and counter this. Add in abuse of Historical Districts by these same cities, and you realize that the state government isn’t some all powerful government entity that can easily force change.
Look at all the drama and fighting back against SB-9.
You just stated that they are not an all powerful government entity that can force change… But you want them to be an all powerful government entity that can override the school districts mentioned in this article. How is that not hypocrisy?
Well when it comes to human rights, yes, absolutely they should force certain standards. This isn’t the state forcing schools to pick a school color.
Bad faith arguments from the right absolutely.
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What a ridiculous argument.
The state isn’t spending resources, they are telling school districts to stop spending resources abusing kids.
