A federal judge ruled Monday against a California school district’s policy ordering teachers to hide kids’ transgender identities from their parents, in a ruling that a lawyer hails as the definitive end to gender secrecy policies in the Golden State.
“The court has fully and permanently dismantled gender secrecy policies across the state of California,” Paul Jonna, a partner at LiMandri and Jonna LLP and special counsel to the Thomas More Society, told The Daily Signal on Tuesday.
The office of Attorney General Rob Bonta, D-Calif., told The Daily Signal that it filed an application to stay the injunction.
“We believe that the district court misapplied the law and that the decision will ultimately be reversed on appeal,” the AG’s office said. “We are committed to securing school environments that allow transgender students to safely participate as their authentic selves while recognizing the important role that parents play in students’ lives.”
Jonna represents Elizabeth Mirabelli and Lori Ann West, two teachers who sued their Escondido Union School District over Administrative Regulation 5145.3. The policy mandates that teachers and school staff will immediately accept a student’s expressed gender identity and bars teachers from revealing the student’s claimed gender identity to parents or guardians unless the student consents to notifying them.
The teachers sued, claiming the policy violates their First Amendment right of free exercise of religion by forcing them to lie or face punishment.
Transgender advocates claim that revealing a student’s transgender identity to his or her parents might endanger the student, because parents might disagree, and such disagreement might lead the student to self-harm, even suicide.
There is little evidence that “affirming” a transgender identity leads to lower suicide rates, though the Food and Drug Administration has documented a higher suicide risk for those undergoing sex-rejecting procedures.
Judge Roger T. Benitez in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California ruled in favor of the teachers and issued a class-wide permanent injunction blocking the Escondido Union School District, the state superintendent, and other officials from enforcing the gender secrecy policy.
Benitez ruled that the “parental exclusion” policy creates a “trifecta of harm:” harming the child who needs parental guidance; harming the parents by depriving them of their rights to care, guide, and make health care decisions for their children; and harming teachers by forcing them to violate their sincerely held religious beliefs and forcing them to conceal information.
The judge cited nine Supreme Court rulings declaring that “parents have a right, grounded in the Constitution, to direct the education, health, and upbringing, and to maintain the well-being of, their children.”
Will the AG Appeal?
Jonna, the teachers’ attorney, acknowledged that Bonta might appeal the ruling, and he expressed hope that Bonta would do so.
“After the California attorney general appeals the ruling, it is bound to set national precedent—ending these dangerous and unconstitutional policies nationwide,” the lawyer told The Daily Signal.
Benitez had previously ruled in favor of the teachers in September 2023, but Bonta directed school districts to adopt gender secrecy policies, citing a state court ruling in an entirely different case.
In July 2024, Gov. Gavin Newsom, also a Democrat, signed AB 1955, which bans the few school policies that required schools to notify parents about their minor children’s “gender identity” changes. The bill went into effect in January.
The U.S. Department of Education under President Donald Trump launched an investigation into the California Department of Education in March, examining whether the gender secrecy policies violated the Family Educational Rights Privacy Act. FERPA gives parents the right to access their children’s educational data.
Gender Secrecy Policies
“California officials should have seen the writing on the wall years ago and abandoned these policies,” Jonna told The Daily Signal. “No reasonable person believes that a young child should be able to socially transition in secret. No reasonable person believes that teachers should be forced to participate in the deception of parents.”
“This ruling restores sanity, common sense, and the rule of law to our school system,” the attorney added. “It will also help prevent future harm to vulnerable children experiencing gender confusion. As experts on both sides of the case acknowledged, leaving parents out of these critical decisions is harmful to children. The only people that benefit by these unlawful policies are political activists—and this ruling dismantles the dangerous system they sought to impose on us all.”
“We are profoundly grateful for today’s ruling,” Mirabelli and West, the teachers in the case, said in a joint statement Monday.
“We loved our jobs, our students, and the school communities we served,” they added. “But we were forced into an impossible position when school officials demanded that we lie to parents—violating not only our faith, but also the trust that must exist between teachers and families. No educator should ever be placed in that situation.”
The California Department of Education declined to comment on “pending litigation,” suggesting it may be considering appealing the decision.
Neither Newsom nor the Escondido Union School District responded to The Daily Signal’s requests for comment by publication time.
