California attorney general warns school districts not to adopt forced outing policies

California school districts should not force staff to out transgender students to their parents, Attorney General Rob Bonta warned in a legal memo sent out Thursday.

The alert was sent to every school district and charter school board and superintendent in the state.

“The Office of the California Attorney General issues this legal alert to remind all school boards that forced gender identity disclosure policies — which target transgender and gender nonconforming students by mandating that school personnel disclose a student’s gender identity or gender nonconformity to a parent or guardian without the student’s express consent — violate state law,” the memo begins.

A legal alert is advisory in nature, and is intended to clarify the law as the California Attorney General’s Office interprets it.

Several school districts in California have enacted such a policy, as well as policies requiring parents to be notified if a student accesses a bathroom or plays a sport that doesn’t correspond with the sex listed on their birth certificate. These policies require parental notification regardless of whether it places the student at risk of harm from doing so.

Bonta’s office is embroiled in a lawsuit with one such school district — Chino Valley Unified, in Southern California — and has secured a preliminary injunction from the judge in that case, barring that district from enacting the notification policy while the case is ongoing.

The alert cited three different ways that forced outing policies violate state law and students’ rights. In the memo, Bonta’s office argued that the policies violate the Equal Protection Clause of the California Constitution.

“Because gender identity is an aspect of gender, transgender or gender nonconforming individuals constitute a protected class under California’s equal protection clause,” the memo reads.

The memo also said that the parental notification policy violates statutory prohibitions on discrimination based on gender, gender expression and gender identity.

“Forced outing policies target one group, and “that group alone” for discriminatory treatment, which violates state anti-discrimination law,” the memo read.

Finally, the memo said that the policy violates California students’ constitutional right to privacy with regard to how and when they disclose their gender identity.

“In sum, by singling out transgender and gender nonconforming students for different, adverse treatment that puts them at risk of harm, forced disclosure policies violate their constitutional right to equal protection and privacy, as well as their statutory protection from discrimination under California law,” the memo concluded.

In a statement accompanying the memo, Bonta said that these school district policies “endanger the psychological and emotional well-being of transgender and gender-nonconforming students” and that such policies “have no place in our classrooms.”

A 2021 study published in the medical journal Pediatrics found that transgender and gender-nonconforming adolescents are more likely to experience abuse than their peers.

A 2022 survey from LGBTQ advocacy group the Trevor Project found that fewer than a third of trans and nonbinary youths view their home as a safe and affirming place.