On Monday, California Attorney General Rob Bonta filed a lawsuit against a school district in the region, claiming that the district’s policy of notifying parents about transgender students violates the students’ civil and constitutional rights and puts them at risk of “mental emotional, psychological, and potential physical harm.”
Democratic state authorities have been trying to counteract the recent adoption of such measures by conservative school boards, and Bonta’s lawsuit against the Chino Valley Unified School District is the most recent example of this trend. Murrieta Valley, Temecula, and Anderson Union High School are just a few of the districts in the last two months that have implemented identical policies, and the decision of this lawsuit might have implications for all of them.
We will never stop fighting for the civil rights of LGBTQ+ children,” Bonta stated in a prepared statement, addressed to Chino Valley Unified and all school districts in California.
The Chino Valley Unified School Board passed a policy last month requiring schools to notify parents whenever a student requests to use a name or pronoun different from what is on file, or to use facilities or participate in programmes that do not correspond with their assigned sex. Republican Assemblymember Bill Essayli sponsored a similar bill at the statewide level, but it has stagnated and has absolutely little chance of becoming law due to the Democrats’ overwhelming majority in the Assembly.
Supporters have called it a “parental rights issue,” while Bonta claims the board is illegally discriminating against transgender and gender-nonconforming youngsters.
“In discussing the policy before its passage, board members made a number of statements describing students who are transgender or gender non-conforming as suffering from a’mental illness’ or ‘perversion,’ or as being a threat to the integrity of the nation and the family,” Bonta said.
Religious conservatives have been active in Chino Valley and other California school districts in recent years, targeting public schools after successfully electing local candidates in a state where Democrats dominate higher posts.
The new policy on trans children has the strong support of Chino Valley Unified Board of Education President Sonja Shaw. Shaw “never involved in any politics” before her November election, claiming that the pandemic only made her realise that Sacramento politicians were “pushing perversion on our children in every possible way.”
She told a throng of supporters at the state Capitol last week, “To be honest with you, I didn’t even know what the GOP was.”
In his case, Bonta claims the policy violates the state’s equal protection provision, the state’s education and government code, and Bonta’s constitutional right to privacy.
Conservative parties are trying to qualify statewide ballot issues relating to schools, while the LGBTQ+ caucus in the Legislature is getting ready to draught a bill prohibiting such regulations, so the tensions are unlikely to end in the courtroom.
