A California superior judge temporarily blocks the Chino Valley Unified School District’s policy of requiring parents to be notified if their child is suspected of being trans. This comes as a victory to the trans community, as many school districts have enacted similar bills which have been harmful to trans students.
Judge Micheal Sachs found that the school districts policy unconstitutional because it discriminated students on the basis of their sexual identity. The districts policy required teachers to notify parents within a three day window if a student expressed a different identity then what was posted on school records.
The judge also cited how the school board when on to refer to both transgender and gender nonconforming students as having a “mental illness.” This goes to show how many right-wing school boards do not follow a close passion for students but rather political power in the classrooms. A school board should be focusing on how to make schools a better place, not a worse one.
Not only did they state that trans students and gender nonconforming students were mentally ill, they also stated that gender identity was linked to death and that the policy was necessary because “women are being erased.”
This ruling puts a pause and hopefully an end to a policy that doesn’t benefit any students ability to achieve further in the classroom. Hatred has spread in massive quantities since Covid, prompting that these policies are actually political tactics and not useful ones.
Judge Sachs cited, “Some trans students are able to come out while others are not.” And he is totally right; many laws and policies in school districts have pretty much silenced trans students from coming out and expressing who they are as people.
Opposers to this law state that there is no law stating that school districts should “hide things from the parents” and while there might not be, some transgender students are not always in supportive households in which they can confidently come out about their identity.
Schools are supposed to be safe havens to students in where they do not have to worry about being in unsafe situations with others. Messing with the lives of trans people because of political gain is scary and downright cruel. Schools are communities, and those communities should be safe for anyone regardless of identity.
