“That inquiry is outside the scope of the intent of my interaction.”

Public schoolteachers at Escondido Union School District, or EUSD—an elementary and middle school district in Escondido, California—are mandated to answer along the lines of that cold, careful answer, when a concerned parent asks whether their child is ‘socially transitioning’ at school. Under “Parental Exclusion Policies” like the one implemented by EUSD, the distressed parent seeking information about their child’s well-being at school is left completely in the dark—with few places left to turn for this vital information about their child.

Unfortunately, EUSD is not the only place where these policies run roughshod over parents’ rights. Over 1,000 school districts across the nation have similar policies on the books, according to Parents Defending Education.

In the federal court case, Mirabelli v. Olson, Thomas More Society has been litigating against Parental Exclusion Policies—fighting to protect our children and parents’ rights across the board. In September 2023, Thomas More Society secured a preliminary injunction order in federal court for two Christian teachers against EUSD and its Parental Exclusion Policy. U.S. District Court Judge Roger Benitez called EUSD’s Parental Exclusion Policy a “trifecta of harm” because it harms children, parents, and teachers.  

But now, with the enactment of Assembly Bill 1955, California has now ratcheted up its heated attack on parents’ rights to a new level.

AB 1955—signed into law on July 15, 2024, by Gov. Gavin Newsom—threatens to radically erode parents’ rights. AB 1955 intends to block any school district in the state from making sure teachers and administrators are transparent with parents when it comes to their own children’s gender confusion in school. This radical, statewide attempt to keep parents in the dark is the latest step in California’s crusade against parents’ rights and child safety. Here’s what you should know about this fight against Parental Exclusion Policies in California.‍

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From the top

California has been leading the dangerous push for Parental Exclusion Policies as these gender secrecy rules spread like wildfire. But the proliferation of these dangerous policies was not, and is not, an organic movement. California’s Parental Exclusion Policies, like the one implemented by EUSD, trickled down from the top.They are based on model policies and guidance promoted by the California Department of Education, or CDE.

Moreover, California Attorney General Rob Bonta and the CDE assert that minor children have both 'autonomy privacy' and 'information privacy' rights with respect to their gender identity, under the California Constitution. According to the CDE, and backed by the California AG, every California school district must adopt some form of these Parental Exclusion Policies.

So, not only were these policies handed down from above, these dangerous and likely unconstitutional policies receive backing at the highest level—through concrete legal action brought by Bonta.

In reaction to this radical affront to parents’ rights, some school districts have instead passed affirmative "Parental Notification Policies," which require school district employees to be transparent with parents about their children’s well-being in school. Bonta has targeted these school districts with costly lawsuits, hauling them into state court in order to pause their policies or bully them to withdraw their transparency policies.

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‍AB 1955

Despite pending legal challenges to Parental Exclusion Policies in federal court, California lawmakers have pushed full-steam ahead with dangerous gender secrecy policies that force teachers to hide information about a child’s gender confusion from his or her parents.

AB 1955 blocks school districts from implementing Parental Notification Policies—or, in others words, seeks to keep parents in the dark about a minor-aged child’s well-being in school, by banning policies that promote such transparency with parents. AB 1955 pits parents against their own children, distorting the “right to privacy” in a disordered manner that harms, rather than helps, gender-confused children.

AB1955 reads:

An employee or a contractor of a school district, county office of education, charter school, or state special school for the blind or the deaf shall not be required to disclose any information related to a pupil’s sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression to any other person without the pupil’s consent unless otherwise required by state or federal law.

As enacted into state law by AB 1955, “any other person” includes parents, as persons who do not—apparently, under AB 1955—have a right to know information related to their child’s “sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression.”

Bonta and the CDE, along with the lawmakers who passed AB 1955, rely on their novel interpretation of the privacy protections in the California Constitution. But that remains merely state law—state law that finds itself in irreconcilable tension with federal constitutional law. The campaign against parents’ rights runs headlong into a long and settled tradition of deference to and respect for parental rights at the federal constitutional level.

AB 1955 is dead on arrival,” Paul Jonna, Thomas More Society Special Counsel and lead attorney in Mirabelli v. Olson. “Parents have federal constitutional rights to know about their own children’s gender transitions. Schools can’t force teachers to withhold that information from parents; and school districts absolutely have the right to pass parental notification policies.”

Thomas More Society is challenging Parental Exclusion Policies in our federal court case, Mirabelli v. Olson—and in the most recent filings, directly target AB 1955.

“Our proposed Second Amended Class Action complaint in Mirabelli v. Olson directly challenges AB 1955—which state officials claim does not create new law, but is only “declaratory” of existing state law. California legislators justify this blatantly unconstitutional law by citing “state privacy rights”—but they apparently do not understand, or refuse to recognize, that those rights are superseded by federal constitutional rights.” (Read Paul Jonna’s full reaction to AB 1955, here.)‍

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‍‍Teachers and parents take a stand

Elizabeth Mirabelli and Lori West love teaching, and they love the children they teach. They’re concerned about the well-being of their students, which is why they were disturbed by the new gender secrecy policies that were implemented at EUSD, the California school district where they have served, collectively together, for 54 years. Elizabeth and Lori are also devoutly Christian, adhering to basic Christian tenets regarding sexuality and the parent-child relationship.

For that reason, they couldn’t stay silent when they were told they must hide vital information about their students from the students’ parents. EUSD’s policies on the treatment of transgender and gender-diverse students forces teachers to use “pronouns or a gender-specific name requested by a student” while “reverting to biological pronouns and legal names when speaking with parents" in order to actively hide information about a child’s gender identity from his or her parents. Their students are young—EUSD is a K-8 elementary and middle school district—and need parental involvement and guidance, especially when gender-related issues can lead to irreversible physical, mental, and emotional consequences.
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Recently, Thomas More Society filed a motion to add several additional plaintiffs to the lawsuit, including a school district and two sets of parents whose gender-incongruent children ‘socially transitioned’ without their knowledge while at school. These parents know, firsthand, the intense harm that results from gender policies like those in California. In a sense, their children have been stolen from them, and they will have to work hard to rebuild relationships with their children that have been damaged by California’s destructive ideology-driven policies.

One of the proposed parent-plaintiffs, “Jane Poe,” describes the gut-wrenching moment thatshe learned that her daughter was identifying as a boy, without her knowledge:

“None of the teachers mentioned to us that she was presenting as a different gender at school... [but] on September 6, 2023, our daughter attempted suicide...

For the next week, my husband and I were distraught as we tried to figure out what had been going on... A doctor at [the hospital] told us that our daughter was identifying as a boy, which is the first time anyone had told us.”

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“John and Jane Poe,” the two parents, desperately and repeatedly, tried to obtain information from their daughter’s school and teachers, after their daughter’s hospitalization. They were met with a formulaic and indifferent response: “We cannot share the gender identity of the student with the parent even if that genderidentity is openly expressed in class.”

Their experience will, tragically, become more common due to policies like AB 1955.‍

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An irreplaceable relationship

The natural bond between parent and child is a gift, an inviolable relationship that cannot be replaced. That’s why Thomas More Society will continue to advocate on behalf of parents and teachers who are speaking out against dangerous school policies and unconstitutional state mandates, such as AB 1955—mandates that harm children, parents, and teachers.

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