600 California Schools Accused Of Secretly ‘Transitioning’ Children Behind Parents’ Backs

(LifeSiteNews) — An attorney group sent a letter on behalf of a group of concerned parents to California Attorney General Rob Bonta warning that approximately 600 school districts in the state are actively violating federal law and the U.S. Constitution by concealing students’ gender transitions from their parents.

The Liberty Justice Center’s (LCJ) letter makes clear that schools hiding a child’s request to change names, pronouns, or gender identity at school from parents burden their constitutional rights. Parents have a fundamental right under the First and 14th Amendments to direct the upbringing, care, and education of their children.

“In 2024, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Assembly Bill 1955 (AB 1955) into law. AB 1955 instructs school districts to keep information regarding children’s efforts to ‘gender transition’ at school secret from their own parents,” LCJ senior counsel Timothy Snowball noted LCJ in an Orange County Register (OCR) commentary.

“In other words,” Snowball wrote, “if your son or daughter starts going by a different name, wearing clothes that don’t match their sex or using the bathroom with the opposite sex, ‘mum’s the word.’”

“If you find the idea disturbing, it means only that you are still sane,” he added. 

The letter marks the launch of a new initiative titled Parental Action and Rights Enforcement to Ensure Notice, Transparency, and Safety (PARENTS) that aims to defend parents when government officials and school bureaucrats try to cut them out of decisions about their children. 

PARENTS will initially focus on California while building a nationwide legal network to defend parental rights wherever government officials attempt to exclude parents from decisions concerning their children, a statement released by LCJ explained.

With attorneys and staff based in California, PARENTS will serve as a legal watchdog and rapid-response litigation initiative for parents, school boards, and communities facing unlawful policies that hide critical information from families.

“It’s far past time for California officials and school districts to realize they can’t legally use our kids to conduct gender transition experiments at school,” Snowballsaid. “Parents have a right, both legally and morally, to direct their own children’s education. This includes knowing essential information about their health, well-being, and education.”

LCJ’s letter asserts that the 600 California school districts are violating the federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) as well as the First and 14th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution.

The Supreme Court’s recent order in Mirabelli v. Bonta makes clear that a conflict with California law does not justify policies that violate parents’ federal rights. In light of that ruling, the LCJ is urging Bonta, who was a named party in the Mirabelli case, to advise California school districts to comply with federal law and the U.S. Constitution.

Furthermore, FERPA guarantees parents the right to access their children’s education records maintained by schools receiving federal funds. The law defines “education records” as records that “contain information directly related to a student” and are “maintained by an educational agency or institution.” Any school-created or school-maintained records concerning a child’s social gender transition are clearly “education records” and therefore must be made available to parents.

The U.S. Department of Education has already found California’s Department of Education to be in violation of FERPA. LCJ’s letter warns that by continuing to enforce AB 1955, California and its school districts risk legal liability and further federal investigation for violating parents’ rights. Schools that accept federal funding must comply with FERPA, and government officials cannot nullify those obligations through state law.

“Gender dysphoria is a condition that has an important bearing on a child’s mental health, and policies concealing that information from parents likely violate parents’ rights to direct the upbringing and education of their children,” Snowball wrote in his OCR piece. “Such policies not only risk harming at-risk children, but to the degree they interfere with parents’ federal rights, also open those districts to federal complaints, investigations by the United States Department of Education, and civil lawsuits.”