As debate rages on the frequency of transgender identification in youth, California’s pressure on public schools to hide students’ gender identity at odds with sex from their parents is facing a mortal blow.
U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez certified a class and four subclasses Wednesday to challenge The Golden State’s so-called gender secrecy practices, two and a half years after teachers Elizabeth Mirabelli and Lori Ann West sued Escondido Unified School District to stop muzzling them so they could inform parents about their children’s in-school identities.
The class covers all individuals who are “participating or will participate in California’s public education system, whether as employees or parents/guardians of students, without having to subject themselves to Parental Exclusion Policies.”
The subclasses – “appropriate where class members have separate and discrete legal claims” – cover employees who object to the policies or “submit a request for a religious exemption or opt-out to complying” with them, and parents or guardians with children in school who object or seek an exemption or opt-out.
It’s the first such class certification on the subject in the nation, the plaintiffs’ lawyers at the Thomas More Society told Just the News.
The order comes a month before a summary judgment hearing where Benitez could rule, without a trial, against the practices as a violation of parents’ First and Fourteenth Amendment rights “to direct their children’s upbringing” and teachers’ free speech and religious freedom rights, the public interest law firm said.
Hellbound and Down 