A San Bernardino Superior Court judge has ruled that a public school district cannot require teachers or school officials to reveal to parents that a student has identified themselves as transgender, saying the policy may be discriminatory.
Superior Court Judge Michael Sachs said the policy enacted by the Chino Unified School District Board on July 23 appears to treat students differently based on sexual or gender identity and may violate California’s Constitution guaranteeing equal protections for all.
Chino is a town in the western end of San Bernardino County in Southern California with a population of about 100,000 people.
Emily Rae
| Liberty Justice Center
While the judge has not yet issued a written order in the case, the judge's ruling from the bench appears largely to side with California State Attorney Rob Bonta, a Democrat, who moved to stop the Chino school board’s approval of the report-to-parents policy.
Sachs appeared to grant Bonta's request for a preliminary injunction against two of three parts of the school board's enacted policy, but allowed a third part of the School Board’s policy, Section 1C, to take effect. Under Section 1C, if a student formally requests a change in paperwork denoting a new gender identity, then parents have a right to know, under the policy.
Opponents of the policy viewed Sach’s decision as a victory in the case.
As the parties await a written order from the judge, attorneys for the Chino schools say they are waiting to see how any injunction might apply to the ability of teachers and other school staff to work with parents and students. For instance, the schools' lawyers said they are not certain at this point if an injunction only blocks the school district from requiring school district employees to report to parents, or effectively bars teachers and others from alerting parents to changes.
The policy in question was adopted by the Chino School Board by a 4-1 vote at a hearing attended by hundreds of people. That meeting was tense. During the hearing, California State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond spoke against the policy.
But angry shouts from opponents in the audience cut him off and he was escorted from the building.
“That doesn’t sound like a democratic hearing to me,” Sachs commented from the bench, at hearing Oct. 19.
The policy mandates that school officials notify parents if a student requests a gender name change, seeks entrance to a sport that does not match their identified sex at birth, or asks school officials to change their records to suit a new gender ID.
Proponents of the policy said parents have a right to know the activities of their children at school while opponents said it would encourage secrecy and harm family relationships.
“Each side has a vested interest as they should,” Sachs said during the hearing in the San Bernardino Court. “It’s unfortunate that kids can’t communicate with their parents and discuss the most intimate things. But it’s how we survive. Folks need to come together and talk. Equal protection must be allowed for all.”
Sachs said a number of other California school districts are faced with the same question and that the issue now facing parents and schools, alike, is “percolating” throughout the state of California. According to The San Bernardino Sun, school boards including Murrieta, Temecula and Orange have established their own parent notification policies regarding student sex and gender identity.
Two different outcomes in federal courts on the issue are pending and Sachs indicated he would be following developments in those cases.
In July U.S. District Judge John Mendez in Sacramento ruled against the reporting policy, saying that the state also had an interest in protecting transgender students from alleged abuse and bullying.
Two months later U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez in San Diego decided that intervention by the state violated a parent’s right to know of their child’s change in gender identity.
Those cases have been appealed to the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco.
Present at the Oct. 19 hearing were Deputy Attorney General Delbert Tran and attorney Emily Rae, senior counsel for the Liberty Justice Center, a Chicago-based nonprofit constitutional rights organization that has taken up defense of the school board’s policy.
LJC board member Corey DeAngelis said on the organization’s website: “I can’t believe we’re at a point in America where authoritarians in power are fighting this hard to keep sexual secrets about children from their own parents. We will win this war the authorities are waging on parents.”
Rae said the Chino Valley District had a right to implement a policy insuring that parents have information that impacts their children’s physical, mental and emotional well-being.
“This policy does not discriminate,” Rae said at the hearing. “Involving parents is an overriding right. Parents are entitled to this information.”
Rae said the state’s action assumes that parents are unfit to deal with their children’s preferences.
“We trust parents,” she said. “The state takes the position that students can keep something from their parents because they’re afraid of what their parents might do. We assume parents are fit (to know).”
Fit unless the legal system for some reason demonstrates otherwise, Rae indicated.
Tran, however. disagreed.
“This policy is discriminatory,” he said. “The (school) district is trying to suggest that students are similarly situated. The policy is not neutral. Parental rights are not germane and this locks students into a closet with the door shut.
Equal protection must be allowed, Tran added.
“We think it (the policy) is improper," Tran said. "It promotes stereotypes rather than parents’ rights.”
Sachs said the problem is exacerbated because children often don’t like to discuss such sensitive issues as gender identity with their parents. He said people in favor of the policy had expressed the opinion that declaring transgender by a student indicated that they were suffering from a “mental illness” and that women were being “erased.”
“It’s a life decision and transgender is a sensitive issue,” Sachs said. “My job as a judge is to decide the issue I’m not a legislator. But to get this issue resolved, that’s my goal.”
Sachs said the health and safety of young people was the main focus of the issue. After the hearing, Rae said the school district and supporters of parents' rights secured a “big win” in the case when Sachs allowed six parents of Chino students to intervene in the case as co-defendants with the school district.
Those parents and their attorneys are expected to participate in proceedings when the case returns to Sachs' courtroom on Feb. 26, 2024.