Late last week, a school district in California adopted a policy requiring schools to notify parents of their child’s gender identity, despite the fact that Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration filed a lawsuit against another school district with a similar policy.
The Orange Unified school board voted 4-0 Thursday to enact the policy, according to the Los Angeles Times. Reportedly, three board members opposed to the policy walked out of the meeting. This sparked a “boardroom disruption” by opponents in the audience.
According to the Times, police officers ushered opposing protesters, part of the “Revolutionary Communist Party,” out of the meeting. The policy protects parents’ rights and keeps them in the loop about their child’s “gender identity” (via the Los Angeles Times):
The resolution approved by the conservative board majority triggers parental notification when a student requests “to be identified 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 notification includes “any request by the student to use a name that differs from their legal name” — other than a common nickname derived from their legal name — “or to use pronouns” that differ from those aligned with official records.
The notification also covers a student’s attempt to take part in athletic activities or use facilities such as a bathroom that don’t align with the student’s birth-certificate gender.
The policy is similar to those passed by governing boards in Chino, Murrieta and Temecula as well as the Anderson Union High School District in Shasta County and the Rocklin school district, northwest of Sacramento.
Orange Unified President Rick Ledesman told the outlet that the resolution to protect parents’ rights was “moral imperative.”
“Parents decide to conceive a child. Then the mother carries the child for nine months — we all know this — only to send their child eventually to school and [for the child] to be told to keep a secret, and because supposedly it comes down from the state,” he explained. “So my concern there is this child keeping a secret and, you know, potentially there’s lies being said, and this child is 12 years old ... [and] is ready to change their lives forever.”
Townhall previously reported how a San Bernardino County Superior judge ruled that the Chino Valley Unified School District cannot enforce a new policy that keeps parents in the loop about their child’s gender identity. This came after California Attorney General Rob Bonta filed a lawsuit against the school district over the policy.
Chino Valley had moved forward with the policy in July, prompting other nearby districts, like Orange Unified, to do the same.
Earlier this month, another California school district paid $100,000 to settle a lawsuit after a mother, Jessica Konen, claimed that district supported her child’s gender transition and kept it a secret from her.