AB 1955 threatens the rights of children and their parents.
Californians for Good Governance submitted a letter opposing AB 1955, which would keep parents in the dark if their child “comes out” at school, violating legally recognized parental rights.
Assembly Bill 1955 seeks to prohibit school districts from implementing policies that require that parents be informed if their child “comes out” as transgender at school. Proponents falsely claim that children have a constitutional right to keep their identities secret from their parents. Californians for Good Governance’s opposition letter, submitted to the California Senate Education Committee today, explains that not only are privacy rights not implicated by parental notification policies, the legally recognized rights of parents mandate they be informed about matters relating to their children. This bill would interfere with parents’ responsibility to safeguard their children’s rights and well-being.
Dear Senator Newman:
Californians for Good Governance is a nonpartisan coalition of California voters advocating for a strengthening of democratic norms and civil liberties in our state. I am writing to express our opposition to Assembly Bill 1955 because it is based on a distorted view of the rights of children and because it would intrude on the rights of families.
Several lawsuits are currently winding their way through the court process to determine the constitutionality of policies either prohibiting or requiring notification to parents when a child announces a transgender identity at school. This bill claims to simply codify existing law but fails to give specifics. Since the dictates of existing law are hotly disputed, this bill would complicate rather than resolve the legal issues.
AB 1955 confuses the question by pretending that parental notification policies are a question of “forced outing” of students, when in fact such policies address situations when children have already “come out” at school, and only the parents are being kept in the dark. In such cases there is no arguable privacy right implicated, since there is no expectation of privacy for information that has been made public. Once a child has announced a desire to be publicly known in school by a new name and gender, any argument about a right to privacy evaporates.[1]
Even if a child had some expectation of privacy with respect to their public gender identity, it would be outweighed by the substantial rights of parents to be informed about matters related to their children. The federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) and the corresponding California Pupil Records Act[2] grants parents nearly unlimited rights to access any school records related to their children. And the United States Supreme Court has consistently upheld the overarching rights of parents to control their children’s upbringing, for example:
“Our jurisprudence historically has reflected Western civilization concepts of the family as a unit with broad parental authority over minor children. Our cases have consistently followed that course; our constitutional system long ago rejected any notion that a child is ‘the mere creature of the State’ and, on the contrary, asserted that parents generally ‘have the right, coupled with the high duty, to recognize and prepare their children for additional obligations.’”[3]
The concept of parental rights should not be a partisan issue. Nor should parents’ rights be seen as generally in conflict with the rights of children. Children’s rights are dependent on parental rights, which is why, for example, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the most widely ratified human rights treaty in history, refers repeatedly to parents’ rights. Leaving the protection of children to public school employees risks leaving children vulnerable to abuse. The state must safeguard parents’ rights in order to protect children’s rights.
For these reasons, we urge the members of this committee to vote “no” on AB 1955.
Sincerely,
Laura Powell
[1] Mirabelli v. Olson (S.D. Cal. Sept. 14, 2023) No. 3:23-cv-00768-BEN-WVG.
[2] Education Code Sections 49060-49078.
[3] Parham v. J.R. (1979) 442 U.S. 584, 604. See also, Myer v. Nebraska (1923) 262 U.S 390; Pierce v. Society of Sisters (1925) 268 U.S. 510, 535; Stanley v. Illinois (1972) 405 U.S. 645; Santosky v. Kramer (1982) 455 U.S. 745; Hodgson v. Minnesota (1990) 497 U.S 417; Troxel v. Granville (2000) 530 U.S. 57; Winkelman v. Parma City Sch. Dist. (2007) 550 U.S. 516
.