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The Huntington Beach City Council voted 4-3 to pass an ordinance declaring the city a “Parents’ Right to Know City,” barring schools from withholding information about a child’s sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression from parents.
This opposes California’s Assembly Bill 1955, which prohibits schools from disclosing such information to parents. The ordinance allows the city attorney to sue the state, challenging the law’s constitutionality. The Liberty Justice Center, already challenging AB 1955, praised the new ordinance.
“The Liberty Justice Center is supporting parental rights in California by challenging AB 1955 and defending school districts from Chino Valley to Rocklin Unified,” said Senior Counsel Emily Rae, according to a Daily Wire report. “We are encouraged by the leadership of Huntington Beach City Council in enacting an ordinance that declares Huntington Beach a ‘Parents’ Right to Know City.”
Rae added: “Parents are the legal guardians of their minor children and have the right to know what their children are doing at school. The vast majority of California voters across the political spectrum support parental rights. The Liberty Justice Center is proud to represent our clients in California for free and to support them in fighting for their individual rights and liberties as parents.”
In mid-July, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed AB 1955 into law, making California the first state to ban school districts from informing parents about their children’s sexual orientation or gender identity if it differs from school records.
Assembly Bill 1955 states the following:
“This bill would prohibit school districts, county offices of education, charter schools, and the state special schools, and a member of the governing board or body of those educational entities, from enacting or enforcing any policy, rule, or administrative regulation that requires an employee or a contractor to disclose any information related to a pupil’s sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression to any other person without the pupil’s consent unless otherwise required by law. LGBTQ+ pupils have the right to express themselves freely at school without fear, punishment, or retaliation, including that teachers or administrators might ‘out’ them without their permission. Policies that require outing pupils without their consent violate pupils’ rights to privacy and self-determination.”
In July 2023, the Chino Valley Unified School District became the first in California to require parental notification if a student adopted a transgender identity. In response, California Attorney General Rob Bonta filed a temporary restraining order in August to block the policy’s implementation.
The L.A. Times has a headline problem.
It ran a piece entitled, “Doesn’t Huntington Beach have something better to do than harass transgender kids?”
But “harassing transgender kids” apparently = telling their parents what gender identity their minor children–too young to buy… pic.twitter.com/1kVUu6JmV1
— Sarah Parshall Perry (@SarahPPerry) August 20, 2024
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