California’s culture wars escalated Monday as the state sued a school district over its transgender student policy, and a parents’ group took the first step toward placing a trio of initiatives on next year’s ballot that would restrict protections for transgender youth.
The moves follow highly publicized incidents last month in which state leaders attempted to rein in school boards they said had run afoul of civil rights laws. Under California’s local control system, school boards have wide latitude to enact their own policies — a freedom that’s now being tested as a handful of districts move to expand parental rights by limiting the rights of LGBTQ students.
Monday morning, Attorney General Rob Bonta filed a complaint (PDF) against the Chino Valley Unified School District in San Bernardino County over its new policy (PDF) requiring parental notification when students change their gender identity at school.
The complaint, filed in San Bernardino County Superior Court, seeks a temporary restraining order against enforcement of the policy, which Bonta referred to as the “forced outing” of transgender and gender nonconforming students, while the court determines whether it violates state law.
“It presents students with a terrible choice,” the attorney general said at a news conference in Los Angeles. “Either walk back your rights to gender identity and gender expression, to be yourself, to be who you are, or face the risk of serious harm. Mental harm, emotional harm, physical harm.”