Bill banning parent notification policies in California schools gains momentum amid protest

After two hours of protest and emotional testimony Wednesday afternoon, the Assembly Committee on Education approved a bill that would prevent California school boards from passing parental notification policies that require school staff to “out” trans students to their parents if the student requests to use different pronouns or go by a different name.

Assembly Bill 1955, sponsored by Assemblyman Chris Ward, D-San Diego, passed the Senate earlier this month, and received support from education committee chair Al Muratsuchi, D-Torrance, and the committee’s other Democratic members. Muratsuchi is a co-sponsor of the bill. The bill will now head back to the Assembly and, if it passes, to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s desk.

The committee hearing chamber was nearly full Wednesday afternoon, with hundreds of people from across the state lining up to voice their support or opposition of the bill. More members of the public opposed the bill than supported it, though both sides had more than 60 people in attendance to voice their opinions.

Republican Assemblymen Heath Flora, R-Ripon, and Josh Hoover, R-Folsom, did not support the bill.

Hoover voiced concerns about the bill “encouraging parents to be kept in the dark.”

“How can parents best support their student if they are kept in the dark?” he asked Ward.

Ward, a gay member of the Legislative LGBTQ Caucus, grew increasingly emotional as he sought to explain how personal the coming out process is for gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender individuals. A student’s choice to come out as transgender at school before they do so at home may be an important part of their process, even if their parents are supportive.

“Coming out is a difficult experience,” Ward said. “I think what we have conflated here is that somehow this is preventing, obstructing, or otherwise making it difficult to have these conversations with a youth and their parent.”

“Even if it’s a loving relationship,” Ward said, after pausing briefly to hold back tears, a parent is “the last person you want to reject you ... When you are jumping ahead an individual’s timeline, it can do an incredible amount of harm.”

Ward confirmed to the committee that his bill would not prohibit a teacher from sharing this information with a student’s parents. Rather, it would make it illegal to force them to do so.

The policies “have torn apart the fabric of (California) communities,” Ward said, “and have put teachers in a very awkward space, and have turned school board meetings into an absolute circus, and away from the core mission of having to talk about the bread and butter of fulfilling that district’s mission.”

‘Forced outing’? School board members say no

LGBTQ advocates and supporters of the bill who oppose parental notification policies refer to them as “forced outing policies.”

Proponents of the bill say the rhetorical change is unfair.

“We are constantly hearing that this an ‘outing policy’,” Sonja Shaw told The Bee before the hearing, in which she was the lead opposing witness.

Shaw is the president of the Chino Valley Unified School District, which became the first district in California to pass the policy last August. In the year since Chino Valley passed its policy, the district has been embroiled in a legal case with the state Attorney General Rob Bonta. (Bonta’s wife, Assemblywoman Mia Bonta, D-Oakland, a former school board member and sitting member of the education committee, supported the bill Wednesday).

Shaw said that the policies only apply to students who specifically request a name or pronoun change, or request to use facilities that do not align with their biological sex — not if a teacher suspects the student is trans, or hears it from someone else.

“It’s really bizarre to me that you’re saying a child can come out to potentially thousands of their peers and hundreds of staff members, but not their parents,” she said. “No one is reporting a conversation ... The child’s already coming out. And as the school district official, we have a really, really great responsibility to ensure that child’s safety and there has to be things put in place to make sure they’re safe, and the other children are safe if this is going to take place in school.”

Thirty minutes before the hearing, Republican Assemblyman and right-wing firebrand Bill Essayli, R-Riverside, led an event outside the Capitol with Assembly Republican Leader James Gallagher (R-Yuba City) and parents’ rights activists, including Shaw.

“There is a false narrative that there is an agenda to somehow hurt or harm children based on their gender ideology”, said Essayli. “That cannot be further from the truth. There is also a false argument that this is designed to forcibly out children, that’s also not true.”

Essayli echoed Shaw’s point: that parents will only be notified if the student requests a formal change.

“If the school is going to be involved in changing (a student’s) gender, then you better damn well believe that the parents are going to be involved as well.”

‘There’s nothing wrong with being trans’

But the bill’s proponents tell a different story — and say parental notification policies serve as a smokescreen for a rising anti-trans movement gaining steam among the Christian right and parents’ rights groups like Moms for Liberty.

Kristi Hirst, a former Chino Valley teacher and one of Ward’s witnesses at the Wednesday hearing, cited the surge in phone calls to an LGBTQ crisis hotline managed by the Rainbow Youth Project.

After the Chino Valley school board passed their policy last August, Rainbow Youth Project launched a California-specific hotline for people concerned about the parental notification policies. The hotline received 5,934 phone calls, and around 1,500 of those calls were about Chino Valley specifically, according to the non-profit Executive Director Lance Preston.

“A lot of young people call in distress,” Preston told The Bee on Wednesday. “They have a fear of being outed, a fear of being rejected by families if they are.” Some students who attended Gay Straight Alliance meetings grew anxious that the school would tell their parents they attended.

Preston said the hotline also gets calls from parents and teachers unsure what their rights are, and that of the students who called, more than 80% report increased instances of being bullied at school since the parental notification policies were instated. One young person was evicted from their home, and another said they experienced physical violence.

Preston said that it isn’t simply the passing of the policies, but the rhetoric used by community members who support them, that can cause harm to trans kids.

Trans kids being called “delusional,” for example, “creates crisis equally, if not more, than the policy itself.” School then becomes a place of anxiety rather than a safe place to learn.

In the hearing Wednesday, Assembly Democrats shared this sentiment.

“First and foremost, there’s nothing wrong with being trans,” said a visibly emotional Assemblywoman Dawn Addis, D-Morro Bay, wearing a pair of Pride flag earrings at the close of the bill’s discussion.

“It’s not a pathology. I didn’t realize sitting up here how emotional it would be to say what I’m saying. We’re talking about kids and about humans. There’s really nothing wrong with kids being who they are.”