Dive Brief:
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California became the first state to explicitly prohibit school districts from outing LGBTQ+ students to their families and others without their consent when Gov. Gavin Newsom on Monday signed the ban into law.
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The Support Academic Futures & Educators for Today’s Youth — or SAFETY — Act also protects teachers and school staff from retaliation if they refuse to reveal information to parents or others related to students' gender or sexual identities.
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"Politically motivated attacks on the rights, safety, and dignity of transgender, nonbinary, and other LGBTQ+ youth are on the rise nationwide, including in California," said Assemblymember Chris Ward, who drafted the measure. "While some school districts have adopted policies to forcibly out students, the SAFETY Act ensures that discussions about gender identity remain a private matter within the family."
Dive Insight:
The law, which goes into effect Jan. 1, comes after some California school districts required that parents be notified of students' gender identification changes. While LGBTQ+ civil rights organizations and teachers have praised the new law prohibiting such policies, it has received pushback from some parent groups.
"By allowing schools to withhold vital information from mothers and fathers, this bill undermines their fundamental role and places boys and girls in potential jeopardy," said Jonathan Keller, president of the California Family Council in a statement on Monday. "Moms and dads have both a constitutional and divine mandate to guide and protect their kids, and AB 1955 egregiously violates this sacred trust.”
One day after the law was enacted, Liberty Justice Center, a conservative civil rights nonprofit, filed a lawsuit challenging the measure. The suit was filed on behalf of Chino Valley Unified School District, which came under fire from the governor and faced a lawsuit from the state attorney general in the past year for requiring staff to notify parents when students asked to use preferred pronouns or bathrooms.
The new California law stands in stark contrast to a handful of others passed in conservative states mandating that school staff notify parents of requested pronoun changes or if students identify as transgender.
Currently, eight states require schools to share information about transgender students with their families, according to the Movement Advancement Project, which tracks LGBTQ+ policies in K-12 education.
In addition to those eight states, five others promote school staff outing students to their parents. For example, in Arizona, schools are required to allow parents to access "all written and electronic records … concerning the parent's child," including counseling and psychological records that could potentially out a transgender student.
California's move is in line with a recent trend of liberal-leaning states passing policies directly contradicting those in conservative states, creating stark divisions in how states approach LGBTQ+ and other controversial issues.
A handful of states including California, for instance, have required LGBTQ+ representation in state curricular standards, while at the same time "Don't Say Gay" laws in conservative states limit discussions and representations of gender and sexuality in the classroom.
Liberal states have also recently passed or pushed for laws that would curb or prohibit book bans, which have become a popular way for conservative states to limit discussion of "divisive concepts" in schools related to race and gender.
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