California’s bizarre crusade against parents on behalf of transgender activists has suffered a temporary setback. That doesn’t make it any less alarming that California is picking this fight in the first place.
On Monday, U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez ruled that parents have a right to know if their children are trying to identify as transgender while at school and that California public schools cannot intervene and prohibit teachers from giving parents that information. California is already appealing this ruling.
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What that means is that California wants to allow school districts to withhold information about children’s mental health and well-being from their parents intentionally. California Democrats continue to argue that “outing” children who claim to be transgender is dangerous, with no further elaboration on why they think it is dangerous. The implication is that the parents of a child will, in some way, abuse or harm their own child if that child claims to be transgender at school, and therefore it is important for teachers and administrators to help that child live a secret life away from home.
This is not some principled fight about localism, either. After all, Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) signed a law banning school districts from adopting mandatory reporting standards for teachers on this very topic. Newsom’s team claimed that this law “preserves the child-parent relationship,” though all it does is essentially leave it up to a school district’s discretion if it will allow its teachers to keep parents in the loop.
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The most telling part of this is that California banned districts from having mandatory reporting policies, but has not banned the blanket no-info policies that Benitez just ruled against. California would rather schools relay no information to parents other than their “educational records” than inform parents if their children are going through identity crises brought on by gender dysphoria.
California still wants to drag this fight through the courts, all while Newsom tries to pretend his state isn’t trying to cut parents out of the parent-child-teacher relationship. If Newsom and California Democrats have their way, schools would be able to hide children’s mental health problems that pop up at school from the parents of those children, all because transgender activists have decided that “outing” a “transgender child” is far worse than allowing parents to know their child is suffering an identity crisis brought on by mental distress.