SAN DIEGO (CN) — California’s Superintendent of Public Instruction and the State Board of Education will stay on as two of multiple state agencies being sued over anti-discrimination policies that stop teachers from revealing students’ gender identities without their permission after a San Diego federal judge denied their motion to dismiss on Friday.
All of the parties in the case point back to a frequently asked question page on the California Department of Education’s website titled “Questions about the School Success and Opportunity Act” as the source of this policy.
That page, the two teacher plaintiffs claim, discussed a policy that mandated teachers not tell the parents of transgender and gender-nonconforming kids that their children were displaying signs of gender dysphoria.
In their motion to dismiss, the Superintendent of Public Instruction and the California State Board of Education argued that on January 2, 2025, the webpage was replaced and updated with a new page entitled “Protections for LGBTQ+ Students: AB 1955” — a new state law that prohibits school districts from forcing teachers disclose the sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression of any of their students without their consent.
Because the original webpage is no longer online, the Superintendent of Public Instruction and the California State Board of Education argued that the teacher’s suit is moot.
U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez, a George W. Bush appointee, didn’t agree.
“The new webpage does not say the CDE has changed its previous policy. It does not say that the new policy permits a teacher to voluntarily disclose gender information to a parent,” Benitez wrote in his order denying the defendants motions to dismiss on Friday.
The policy described on the webpage doesn’t say whether teachers can now voluntarily disclose their students gender identities and there’s nothing stopping the state from altering, abandoning, or bringing back the previous policy in the future, Benitez added.
Therefore, the teacher’s suit is not moot, he added.
“If the defendants made a commitment to not enforcing the FAQs policy against voluntary teacher disclosure and entered into a consent judgment binding themselves and their successors in office, that would likely moot plaintiffs’ case. In the meantime, the actual chilling effect of the FAQs policy on plaintiffs’ constitutional rights remains,” Benitez wrote.
Late last year, the California State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond, the California State Board of Education and the state attorney general argued that what was described on that site were not strict policies that the state enforces, but guidelines that schools can pick and choose from to support students and parents in their school districts.
The attorney representing California’s Superintendent of Public Instruction and the State Board of Education did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“Time and time again, the California Department of Education has tried to weasel its way out of our case and sidestep legal accountability,” plaintiff attorney Paul Jonna, of Thomas Moore Society and LiMandri & Jonna, said in a statement.
“Our depositions of the CDE, and their own public filings, conclusively demonstrate that the CDE has actually never wavered from its core position — the dangerous notion that children have a constitutional right to hide their gender identity from their own parents. We’re encouraged by the court’s ruling, and we will keep prosecuting this case until we obtain permanent, class-wide relief for parents, children, and teachers, by putting the final nail in the coffin of California’s Parental Exclusion Policies,” he added.
Introduced by Assemblyman Tom Ammiano and signed into law by former Governor Jerry Brown in 2013, the School Success and Opportunity Act extends discrimination protections to trans and gender-nonconforming students.
The two middle school teachers in Escondido, California originally sued their school district, the state attorney general and other state agencies in 2023, claiming such policies protecting transgender and gender-nonconforming students’ privacy violates their religious liberties and free speech rights, along with parents’ 14th Amendment rights to rear their children as they see appropriate.
The American Psychiatric Association’s website refers to gender dysphoria as “psychological distress that results from an incongruence between one’s sex assigned at birth and one’s gender identity” which some transgender people might experience.
“Diverse gender expressions, much like diverse gender identities, are not indications of a mental disorder,” the APA states on their website.
People experiencing gender dysphoria, the website continues, might find support through “adopting pronouns, names, and various aspects of gender expression that match their gender identity,” as well as changing their names on government documents, and seeking affirmative medical care.