Earlier this month, Townhall reported how the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL) asked the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) to take a case surrounding a policy at a Wisconsin School District allowing teachers to keep their students’ “gender identities” concealed from their parents.
“Thousands of school districts across our country have these policies. If parents cannot challenge them until after their children are harmed, they have no way to protect their kids other than pulling them from public school,” WILL Deputy Counsel, Luke Berg, said in a statement.
In one left-wing state, Democrats are working to make it illegal for schools to keep parents informed about their child’s so-called “gender identity.”
On Thursday, the California Senate approved a proposal that would ban school districts from passing or enforcing policies that require staff to keep parents in the loop about their child’s “gender identity” or sexual orientation. School staffers would only be permitted to disclose this information to parents with consent from the student.
Predictably, the legislation passed along party lines (via the Associated Press):
Lawmakers approved the legislation along party lines after more than an hour of an emotional debate in which Democratic LGBTQ+ senators recounted stories about how they delayed coming out to their parents or were outed by someone else. They argued gender-noncomforming students should be able to come out to their families on their own terms. But Republican lawmakers said the state shouldn’t dictate whether school districts can enforce so-called parental notification policies and that schools have an obligation to be transparent with parents.
Republican state Sen. Kelly Seyarto reportedly said that schools should be transparent with parents.
“If we include the parents, that’s the best way to take something from people being angry and mad to developing a solution that works for everybody,” he said.
🚨California Democrats and teachers unions teamed up to ban schools from notifying parents if their child asks to go by a new pronoun at school.
— Nicki Neily (@nickineily) June 17, 2024
They don’t believe it’s safe to tell parents what’s happening to their own children. pic.twitter.com/l1dYfvFq3g
Now, the bill is headed to the state Assembly. It would have to pass committees and the floor before heading to Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom’s desk.
This week, Townhall reported how parental rights group Parents Defending Education has revealed that six school districts across Nevada have policies to help students change their gender identity without their parents finding out.
“It should come as no surprise that students aren’t meeting basic benchmarks in reading and math when districts are prioritizing race and gender ideology. Any time spent instructing teachers on gender issues is time not spent teaching the basics. When schools go a step further and ask teachers to exclude parents from vital information about a child’s life, open sex-separated spaces based on gender identity, or require the use of preferred pronouns, they threaten the basic rights and safety of students and their families. These Nevada districts should do their job and prioritize learning over gender politics," Alex Nester, investigative fellow at PDE, told Townhall.
"When schools facilitate a child's gender transition, they are engaging in a psychosocial intervention that can have long lasting consequences. The idea that they would hide this intervention from the parents is an ethical abomination and likely illegal," Erika Sanzi, director of outreach at PDE, added.