A federal judge has permanently blocked California’s controversial policy requiring public school teachers to withhold information from parents about their children’s gender transitions, declaring it a violation of constitutional rights.
The ruling, delivered Monday by U.S. District Court Judge Roger T. Benitez, came in response to a class-action lawsuit filed by Christian teachers Elizabeth Mirabelli and Lori West. The lawsuit challenged school mandates that compelled educators to use students’ preferred pronouns in school while keeping parents in the dark about their children’s gender identity changes.
In a sweeping decision, Judge Benitez sided with the teachers and parents, writing that the state’s so-called “gender secrecy” policies violate the First and Fourteenth Amendments.
“In each case, this Court concludes that, as a matter of law, the answer is ‘yes,’” Benitez wrote. “Parents have a right to receive gender information and teachers have a right to provide to parents accurate information about a child’s gender identity.”
The ruling was praised by the Thomas More Society, which represented the plaintiffs, as a “historic victory” for both transparency in education and parental rights.
Benitez identified four key constitutional questions:
Whether parents have a right to gender information under the 14th Amendment.
Whether that right is also protected by the First Amendment’s Free Exercise Clause.
Whether religious teachers can share gender information with parents under the Free Exercise Clause.
Whether teachers have a free speech right to share accurate gender identity information with parents.
In all cases, the judge ruled the answer was yes.
“The parental exclusion policies create a trifecta of harm,” Benitez warned, explaining that the secrecy:
Harms children by denying them necessary parental guidance and medical evaluation,
Harms parents by stripping them of rights to care for and guide their children, and
Harms teachers by forcing them to violate their conscience and religious beliefs.
He also slammed the policy as discriminatory against lower-income families who cannot afford private schooling or relocation to districts without such mandates.
“For these parents, the new policy appears to undermine their own constitutional rights,” Benitez wrote. “The State Defendants are, in essence, asking this Court to limit, and restrict a common-sense and legally sound description by the United States Supreme Court of parental rights. That, this Court will not do.”
The permanent injunction halts the enforcement of these gender secrecy mandates across California, setting a major precedent for other states facing similar battles over parental rights, free speech, and gender ideology in public education.
The post Federal Judge Strikes Down California Law Forcing Teachers to Hide Gender Transitions From Parents appeared first on Real News Now.
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