California runs roughshod over parents’ rights, allowing public school officials alone to direct the lives of their children...

In enacting House Bill 2955, California misused its authority by essentially reducing parents to silent bystanders at best, allowing public school officials alone to direct the lives of their children.

On July 15, 2024, Governor Gavin Newsom of California signed the radical progressive law Assembly Bill 2955into effect. As I discussed in an earlier column, the deceptively named “Support Academic Futures and Educator Today’s Youth Act” advances transgender ideology.

Previously, in September 2022, Newsom signed Senate Bill 107 into law, making California a “sanctuary” state offering shelter to transgender children and their parents who leave jurisdictions restricting access to gender-affirming care to minors. In September 2023, Newsom vetoed Assembly Bill 957, which would have allowed public officials to remove children from the custody of parents who refused to affirm the chosen gender identities of their young.

California enacted Assembly Bill 2955, at least in part, in response to Attorney General Rob Bonta’s having successfully challenged local school board transgender policies. These policies required educators to inform parents if their children asked to be identified in school other than by their biological sexes or genders, be addressed by pronouns not aligned with their biological genders, or be able to use bathrooms not aligned with their genders.

House Bill 2955 runs roughshod over parental rights. It makes California the first state to prevent parents from what it describes as forcibly outing their children in elementary and secondary schools, who identify as LGBTQ+. Rather than provide needed support for unemancipated, mostly minors, as they go through emotional upheaval over their identities and sexual orientations at a time when they need their parents most, this law drives a wedge between children and their families.

Of course, students experiencing gender dysphoria, which is often fueled or influenced by social pressure from educators and peers, need loving care. Yet, this bill tears at the very fabric of family cohesion by forbidding public school officials from informing parents whose children (regardless of their ages and/or emotional states) seek to make unalterable changes as to their “gender identities”.

House Bill 2955 bans “policies that forcibly ‘out’ pupils without their consent [because they] remove opportunities for LGBTQ+ young people and their families to build trust and have these conversations when they are ready.”

The bill maintains that “[p]olicies that require outing pupils without their consent violate pupils’ rights to privacy and self-determination.”

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