California city sues state for standing between parents, children

A group of California parents and the city of Huntington Beach, Calif., have filed a lawsuit against a new state law that prohibits school districts from requiring staff to notify parents if their child asks to go by a different name or pronouns while at school.

Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the Support Academic Futures and Educators for Today’s Youth, or SAFETY, Act into law in July, set to go into effect Jan. 1.

While this first-of-its-kind law doesn’t prohibit teachers from sharing identity information with parents, it prevents schools from requiring them to do so. Teachers in public classrooms from preschool to high school will have the sole discretion on whether to share with parents or not.

In August, the city council of Huntington Beach voted to express opposition to the SAFETY Act. The city of nearly 200,000 had previously passed an ordinance that required educators to inform parents if their children wanted to identify as the opposite sex at school. This regulation directly conflicts with the new state law, the city argues.

Last Tuesday, the city and nine families from various political and ethnic backgrounds filed a lawsuit challenging the SAFETY Act, arguing that it violates constitutional parental rights.

“The state of California is now using state law to force schools to hide a child’s desire to ‘gender transition’ from parents,” Gene Hamilton, executive director at America First Legal, which represents the families, said in a statement. “This is outrageous. Parents—not the government or any school system—have the utmost right to raise their children and protect their children from this dangerous ideology.”

The majority of the families involved in the suit have children who have struggled with mental health concerns and questioning their gender identity. As parents in these families say they tried to help their children, they felt like educators regularly concealed information from them.

The lawsuit contends that the SAFETY Act violates the 14th Amendment, which guarantees the right of parents to make decisions about the education and medical care of their children.

When parents are uninformed about children’s gender transition, these kids can then be “socially” transitioned to another gender, which the lawsuit argues is a type of medical intervention.

The parents are worried that the new law will further keep necessary medical knowledge about their children from them. They and the city are seeking to “to protect parental rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution” and “to protect children who need parents to know their medical situation,” the lawsuit states.

“Whether a child socially transitions or announces their sexuality is a personal and private issue, not an educational issue,” the complaint argues. “The state is thus intruding in a very personal, private matter—communication on one of the most intimate of topics between a parent and child—in violation of the U.S. Constitution.”

Families in this lawsuit assert the harm of the law is clear. One parent has a child who previously struggled with mental health and gender confusion. The parent is concerned that if the new law goes into effect, the child could socially transition without the parent’s knowledge, leading to “permanent psychological and physical damage,” according to the lawsuit.

Supporters of laws like the SAFETY Act often claim they protect students by maintaining their right to privacy, said Ernie Walton, director at Regent University School of Law’s Center for Global Justice.

“Students have a right to privacy that schools cannot disclose information to nonparental figures … but that information should never be [with]held from parents,” Walton said.

While the U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld parents’ rights to raise and educate children as they see fit, it hasn’t ruled on whether schools or states have the authority to restrict information on gender identity, he said.

Lower level courts have had a mix and match of rulings on this topic across the country, Walton said.

In April 2023, Amber Lavigne filed a lawsuit against a school district in Maine after it allegedly gave her 13-year-old daughter a chest binder and addressed her with male pronouns. After lower courts ruled against Lavigne, the case is on appeal with the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Earlier in 2023, a federal judge declined to block an Iowa law that allowed students to choose to identify as the opposite sex at school, including going by another name, while directing school staff not to inform their parents.

After the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed a lawsuit from parents against Montgomery County Board of Education in Maryland, the parents appealed to the Supreme Court in 2023. The parents contested the school's policies that instructed staff to create and implement gender support plans for students without informing parents. The Supreme Court declined to hear the case, and it is weighing whether to hear a similar appeal in another case from parents in Eau Claire, Wis.

Walton said the high court needs to weigh in on this topic soon.

“This whole question of whether a child can transition involves the deepest moral and religious questions,” Walton said. “Parents have the absolute priority and fundamental right to decide how their children are raised in that issue.”