(The Lion) — A California school district will continue being able to notify parents when students request changes to their official or unofficial records after a legal battle over the district’s policy concluded this week.
The lawsuit began in 2023, when the state of California sued Chino Valley Unified School District over a policy requiring the district to notify parents if their children requested to use a different name, pronouns or facilities for the opposite sex. Parents would also be alerted if students requested changes in their official or unofficial records.
The district said it was aiming to support the “fundamental rights” of parents and guardians to direct the upbringing of their children. California Attorney General Rob Bonta, when filing the state’s lawsuit, called the parental notification plan a “forced outing policy” that discriminated against LGBT students.
The district later revised its policy, following earlier rulings from a California court. Under the updated policy, school administrators would still notify parents about changes to a child’s school records, but the policy no longer included language specifically requiring the district to notify parents about gender identity changes.
“In September 2024, the court ruled that the terms of the original policy remaining in the updated policy – namely, that parents must be notified if children request to change their official or unofficial school records, regardless of the reason for those changes – were constitutional and could not be enjoined,” the Liberty Justice Center, which represented the school district in court, said in a statement. “The court also held that the district’s original policy did not infringe on minor students’ privacy rights.”
Because Bonta did not appeal that court decision by a court-imposed deadline, the Liberty Justice Center announced this week that the case is closed and that “in a victory for parents’ rights,” the Chino Valley Unified School District would continue to enforce the new policy.
“We are proud to have defended Chino Valley’s parental notification policy, and look forward to continuing our ever-expanding legal battle for Californian families’ rights,” Liberty Justice Center senior counsel Emily Rae said.
The district can notify parents about changes including if a student “asks to change their records in connection with requesting to transition their gender at school,” Rae said in a statement provided to The Lion. “Chino also won because the Court found that minor children who are publicly transitioning their gender at school (public in that teachers know, other students know, anyone who is at the school would know) do not have a privacy right against their parents.”
Bonta’s office did not respond to a request from The Lion for comment about the lawsuit.
The legal battle came to a close as debate about parental rights and gender ideology in schools has been ramping up under the Trump administration. President Donald Trump has been an outspoken critic of so-called “gender transitions” for youth and has signed an executive order banning federal funding to schools that promote radical gender ideology.
