The California attorney general is launching an all-out assault on parents and families with a new lawsuit asserting state control over schoolchildren.
On Monday, state Attorney General Rob Bonta sued to stop a new policy in a southern California school district that requires schools to notify parents whenever a child identifies as transgender and begins to pursue a so-called gender transition. The new guidelines adopted by the Chino Valley Unified School District in July would have required schools to tell parents if their child sought changes in pronoun use, sports participation, or bathroom assignments contrary to his or her sex. The state’s Democrat attorney general argues the district’s new disclosure rule violates students’ civil rights and risks “emotional, physical, and psychological harm.”
“Every student has the right to learn and thrive in a school environment that promotes safety, privacy, and inclusivity — regardless of their gender identity,” Bonta said in a statement. “We’re in court challenging Chino Valley Unified’s forced outing policy for wrongfully and unconstitutionally discriminating against and violating the privacy rights of LGBTQ+ students. The forced outing policy wrongfully endangers the physical, mental, and emotional well-being of non-conforming students who lack an accepting environment in the classroom and at home.”
The attorney general’s press release went on to disparage concerned parents and school board members as passing the measure with “animosity, discrimination, and prejudice” toward trans-identified students, “as evidenced by statements made during the Board’s hearing.”
“In discussing the policy before its passage, board members made a number of statements describing students who are transgender or gender-nonconforming as suffering from a ‘mental illness,’ or ‘perversion,’” the press release said. “The Board President went so far as to state that transgender and gender nonbinary individuals needed ‘non-affirming’ parental actions so that they could ‘get better.’”
The data, however, supports claims made by the proposal’s proponents and vindicates the board president’s alleged recommendation that parents adopt a cautious “non-affirming” approach to their trans-identified kids.
A 2019 study found nearly 60 percent of trans-identified patients in a more than 10,000-patient survey were diagnosed with at least one psychiatric disorder. Meanwhile, access to transgender medical interventions has been shown to increase the risk of suicide. A report last summer from the conservative Heritage Foundation found that “easing access to cross-sex treatments without parental consent significantly increases suicide rates.” Another major long-term study out of Sweden showed that people who underwent transgender surgery were 19 times more likely to die by suicide than the general population.
More and more detransitioners are now coming forward to share stories of how impulsive prepubescent medical treatment left them permanently “damaged.” In July, a 19-year-old detransitioner named Chloe Cole, who had a double mastectomy, testified on Capitol Hil about the “nightmare” she experienced as a victim of adolescent transgender ideology.
“It’s caused permanent changes to my body. My voice will forever be deeper, my jawline sharper, my nose longer,” she said. “My bone structure permanently masculinized. My Adam’s apple more prominent. My fertility unknown. I look in the mirror sometimes, and I feel like a monster.”
“I thought that in the end I could become a man but all I became was a mutilated and abused version of myself”
Detransitioner Katie Lennon who transitioned at 18, including hormones, a double mastectomy, and a full hysterectomy at 21 years old, testifies in Concord, NH in favor… pic.twitter.com/IwjW3ZpJOJ
Yet the United States remains an outlier with its approach to trans minor medical treatment. Physicians have been found to “rubber-stamp” diagnoses of gender dysphoria to approve devastating procedures.
In June, England passed new restrictions on irreversible transgender medical interventions for pediatric patients. Other European nations are following suit as more research emerges on the dangers of premature interventions such as cross-sex hormones and surgeries.
“In the past few years, European health authorities conducted systematic reviews of evidence for the benefits and risks of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones,” the City Journal reported in February. “The findings from these reviews — that the certainty of benefits is very low — guided the hand of policymakers there to restrict access to hormones.”
In California, however, leaders are on a crusade to establish the state as a “haven” for gender-confused children. Last fall, Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill to “offer refuge” for out-of-state minors seeking trans medical interventions in California without parental consent. The new law also mandates that doctors hide children’s medical information related to “gender identity” from their parents.
State animosity toward parents who oppose transgender ideology escalated this summer with legislation drafted in Sacramento that would charge parents with “child abuse” if they don’t “affirm” a child’s trans ideations.
Republican state Sen. Scott Wilk bluntly recommended that parents “flee” the state over Democrats’ transgender radicalism.
“In the past when we’ve had these discussions and I’ve seen parental rights atrophy, I’ve encouraged people to keep fighting,” Wilk said in June. “I’ve changed my mind on that,” Wilk added. “If you love your children, you need to flee California. You need to flee.”
Wilk declared he would leave the state himself when his legislative term expires.
Tristan Justice is the western correspondent for The Federalist and the author of Social Justice Redux, a conservative newsletter on culture, health, and wellness. He has also written for The Washington Examiner and The Daily Signal. His work has also been featured in Real Clear Politics and Fox News. Tristan graduated from George Washington University where he majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow him on Twitter at @JusticeTristan or contact him at Tristan@thefederalist.com. Sign up for Tristan’s email newsletter here.
Chino Valley Unified School District President Sonja Shaw tells a woman who disrupted the school board meeting to leave the room at Don Lugo High School in Chino, California, on Thursday night. The CVUSD board voted 4-1 on a parental notification policy requiring schools to notify parents if their child changes his or her pronouns. Death threats from left-wing extremists have ensued. (Photo: Will Lester/Media News Group/Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/Getty Images)
A local school board president in California has been inundated with threats that left-wing activists will dismember her, kill her children, and slaughter her pets. Her crime? Saying that teachers should not keep parents in the dark if their children begin to “identify” as transgender.
The new Chino Valley (California) Unified School District Board of Education policy states that school officials will notify parents in writing within three days if a child seeks to “identify” as a gender “other than the student’s biological sex,” use different pronouns, adopt a different name, or use the restroom or join a sports team of the opposite sex. The board adopted the resolution Thursday by a 4-1 vote, with member Donald Bridge casting the lone dissenting vote.
“The next morning, our district got a phone call” from an anonymous caller threatening “to kill me, and they said that they were going to dismember” school board president Sonja Shaw, the official revealed on “Washington Watch With Tony Perkins” on Monday. Police alerted Shaw to the threat shortly before a previous interview on the show last Friday.
Then Shaw looked at her district email account, where she said she saw messages stating, “You’re going to die,” with a series of profane epithets. “Your children are going to die, and your animals are going to die.” For a “point of reference, they would name what kind of animals I had,” Shaw added.
“I also got notification that people who identify as being in the terrorist organization Antifa posted on their website, ‘We declare war on Sonja Shaw,’” Shaw told Perkins, adding that the group posted her address. “They said, ‘We know where you sleep,’” the same message an angry mob screamed outside the home of then-Fox News host Tucker Carlson in 2018. “They said things like, ‘Use all force possible to stop her.’”
“I’m not going to lie. I was shaking,” Shaw confided on Monday. Police had beefed up patrols around her home to ensure security, she said.
While she had been “hesitant” to share the details of her ordeal, “God reminded me that these are the people that are after our children.”
“Sacramento has waged a war on parental rights, and a lot of it has to do with the perversion of our children,” Shaw told “Washington Watch” guest host Jody Hice, a former Georgia congressman, on Friday.
“We have to put up safeguards. That’s why I was put here,” Shaw told the school board meeting on Thursday.
After being alarmed by Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom’s top-down imposition of radical education policy as a parent, Shaw ran for school board, and “God opened the doors” to implement the new policy, she told Hice. When the Newsom administration learned of the impending policy, state Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond arrived at the district meeting Thursday night.
“It was a political stunt. He was trying to scare us,” assessed Shaw.
Thurmond requested a private meeting with Shaw prior to the meeting, but declined to follow through when he learned she would not withdraw the policy, Shaw has said. He instead addressed the board meeting, speaking as the first of 83 Californians to make their voices heard. Video footage shows the attendees booed when Thurmond concluded, as Shaw asked everyone to “be respectful” toward the official. Thurmond exceeded his one-minute speaking slot, then returned to the podium demanding a “point of order,” although he is not a board member. Police eventually escorted him out of the building.
Thurmond later claimed he “stayed within the one-minute limit,” and tweeted, “When done speaking, the board president verbally attacked me an [sic] instructed police to remove me.”
State Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, who authored a bill allowing out-of-state children who identify as transgender to flee to California and be injected with cross-sex hormones against their parents’ wishes, alleged, “The QAnon school board president cut him off.” But his former colleague, ex-state Sen. Melissa Melendezpointed out that “Thurmond militantly enforced the rules for speakers when he was in the legislature.”
The district’s newly enacted policy has won the support of parental rights advocates and education experts nationwide. “The school board in Chino Valley is making parental involvement and inclusion a priority. State level officials interested in a healthy school system should follow their lead,” Meg Kilgannon, senior fellow for education studies at the Family Research Council, told The Washington Stand.
But the policy drew instant backlash from the California Legislative LGBTQ Caucus, which announced its members are already “actively working on new approaches” to override the democratically enacted resolution. The liberal caucus added that parents who represented the near-unanimous consensus of the Chino Valley school board “will not stop us.”
“It appears some state legislators are scheming to make the newly passed CVUSD policy illegal with a future bill,” said Jonathan Zachreson, a member of the Roseville City School District school board and the founder of Reopen California Schools.
Parents in the district have expressed enthusiastic approval. “I think it’s crucial that we keep parents in this conversation. I think that the worst thing you can do to a child is to ostracize their parents from such an important conversation,” Amy Davlin, a parent in the district, told Newsmax on Tuesday morning.
“Groomers and pedophiles are the ones who attempt to gain the trust of children and encourage them to keep secrets” from their parents, said Davlin. A school district should “not encourage children to deceive and lie to their parents.”
More than two-thirds (68%) of Californians agree that parents should be notified if their minor children change their gender identity, according to a poll taken by Protect Kids California.
“I believe there is an all-out agenda against our children,” said Davlin, adding the new policy sends a message to activists who have weaponized education against parents: “You have crossed a red line. The red line is our children.”
Democrats have indicated a legal fight will ensue. California State Attorney General Rob Bonta threatened that the pro-parental rights policy “may violate California’s anti-discrimination law” in a letter to the Chino Valley school board seeking to sway Thursday’s vote. Disclosing a child’s transgender identification to his or her parents “is very likely to result in significant emotional, mental, and even physical harm,” Bonta asserted.
Parents and board members reject that talking point. “Why are you assuming that parents are dangerous?” asked Shaw.
“If you want a lower suicide rate, bring the parents into the conversation,” said Davlin. “We are the ones who love the kids the most. We are the ones who have their best interests at heart, not their teacher who is with them a few hours a day.”
As Newsom and Thurmond focus on social issues, California students fall further behind. California ranks 38th nationwide in K-12 education, according to U.S. News and World Report—behind such Republican strongholds as Florida (14), Virginia (13), Indiana (7), Utah (9), Nebraska (11), and South Dakota (24). Education levels may improve if teachers focused on fundamentals rather than indoctrination, said Kilgannon. “We’re just trying to get the crazy out: To not have children taught wrong history, not have children taught that they could be born in the wrong body, not have children shown sexually explicit images,” she told Perkins on Monday.
Meanwhile, a potential 2024 Democratic presidential hopeful, Newsom, “plays the biggest part” in fueling the vitriol, hatred, and potential violence directed toward the Chino Valley school board, said Shaw. “But I’m glad that they’re exposing themselves,” she continued.
“My daily prayer is for those to be revealed, exposed, and removed that don’t have the best intentions and that have ill-intent for children,” Shaw told Perkins. Thanks to their voluble radicalism, “More people are starting to realize what we’re up against.”
“They’re literally driving a wedge between parent and child,” said Perkins on Monday. “This is evil. It’s just pure evil.”
American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
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American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
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American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
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