U.S. Department of Ed Finds California Violated Federal Law Hiding Students’ ‘Gender Transitions’ from Parents

The U.S. Department of Education’s Student Privacy Policy Office announced Wednesday that the California Department of Education (CDE) is in continued violation of the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA)—a federal law granting parents the right to access their child’s education records—for policies that pressure school officials to conceal information about students’ “gender identity.”

“Our investigation found that the California Department of Education egregiously abused its authority by pressuring school officials to withhold information about students’ so-called ‘gender transitions’ from their parents. Under Gavin Newsom’s failed leadership, school personnel have even bragged about facilitating ‘gender transitions,’ and shared strategies to target minors and conceal information about children from their own families. While the Biden Administration turned a blind eye to this deprivation of parental rights and endorsed the irreversible harms done to children in the name of radical transgender ideology, the Trump Administration will fight relentlessly to end it,” said U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon. “Children do not belong to the State—they belong to families. We will use every available mechanism to hold California accountable for these practices and restore parental rights.”

What in fresh hell is this about?

In July 2024, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Assembly Bill 1955 by Assemblyman Chris Ward (D-San Diego), to prohibit schools from notifying parents if their child is “gender confused” or “transitioning” to the opposite sex. Horrifyingly, the bill’s title is “Support Academic Futures and Educators for Today’s Youth Act.” AB 1955 was passed through both houses of the Legislature on party lines.

Assemblyman Ward’s rationale for authoring AB 1955 was so trans kids would not be “outed” by teachers at school. Ward conflates gay kids with trans kids as if they are one-in-the-same.

This is perhaps the weakest excuse for the bill even just legally, because laws across the country state that a parent must meet a child’s basic needs and parent in a way that serves the child’s best interests. Parents also have a financial duty to raise and support their children, as well as their children’s basic needs of food, clothing, housing, medical care, and education. This usually continues until each child reaches the age of 18.

“Governor Gavin Newsom defied parents’ constitutional and God-given right to raise their children by signing AB 1955 which codifies the government’s authority to keep secrets from parents,” then-Assemblyman Essayli said. “AB 1955 endangers children by excluding parents from important matters impacting their child’s health and welfare at school. Governor Newsom signing AB 1955 is both immoral and unconstitutional and we will challenge it in court to stop the government from keeping secrets from parents.”

The California Legislature continues to try to replace parents with school counselors, teachers, mental health providers, abortion providers, “gender-affirming” trans care specialists, or any number of adults willing to give vaccines, feed kids drugs, provide opposite-sex hormones, authorize gender surgeries, and get them treatment for sexual violence and rape – without a parent being any the wiser.

AB 1955 has a whole host of problematic issues including violating mandatory school reporting requirements, and enables really messed up parents who not only allow a child to “transition” to the opposite sex, some parents actually promote the transitioning to the child. And this bill manages to identify and target parents who would not be supportive of the transitioning of their child to the opposite sex.

As the Globe reported:

The bill actually is promoting public schools hiding important health and medical information about minor children from parents.

By taking this stance of effectively promoting gender transitioning in “gender confused” students, schools are as treacherous as the Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy parent because they are enabling. In many couples, one parent opposes the gender transitioning of a child, while the other is pushing it.

AB 1955 appears to also be a back door way to allow schools to cover for Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy, which is a mental illness and a form of child abuse, according to the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. “The caretaker of a child, most often a mother, either makes up fake symptoms or causes real symptoms to make it look like the child is sick. It feeds her ego to be involved with medical professionals in deciding the course of treatment.”

“Often, they can describe the child’s symptoms in great medical detail. They like to be very involved with the health care team and are liked by the staff for the care they give the child.”

The U.S. Department of Education blasts California, specifically naming AB 1955:

The USDOE Student Privacy Policy Office concluded that certain California Department of Education (CDE) policies and practices create powerful state-directed pressure for schools to adopt policies that have led to FERPA noncompliance. Instead of ensuring compliance with FERPA as a recipient of Federal funding, California state laws, guidance, and legal actions – such as AB 1955, which prohibits schools from requiring parents to be informed of their child’s “gender transition” – have effectively coerced districts to withhold information from parents in violation of FERPA. District leaders claim State laws and CDE policies put districts in a position of having to choose between complying with FERPA or getting sued by the State. SPPO further determined that the CDE coerces school districts to withhold information about students’ “gender identity,” including through the use of secret “gender support plans” kept in separate filing systems for the primary purpose of hiding these records from parents. The CDE’s guidance asserts these plans are not part of a student’s cumulative record accessible to parents, which directly violates parents’ rights under FERPA to inspect all education records related to their minor children.

It gets worse:

According to SPPO’s investigation and public records, school personnel went to great lengths to conceal children’s “gender transitions,” including by petitioning the student management software company used in many California schools to create features that hide student name changes and pronouns from parents. In emails dating back to 2022, staff discussed changing student names without parental knowledge, using different names in front of parents, and overriding the Parent Portal to limit what parents see.

Last year, it was reported that at least 300 students in California were put on “Gender Support Plans,” many without parental consent or knowledge. In a case recently heard by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, a mother sued her daughter’s school after finding out that the staff had convinced her daughter to identify as transgender, directed her daughter not to tell her mother, and instructed the daughter on making chest binders. The mother was informed by administrators that they could not inform her of all of this due to their “parental secrecy policy.”

California has also aggressively targeted schools that follow FERPA and refuse to hide students’ “gender identity” from parents. When Chino Valley Unified School District’s school board adopted a parental notification policy in July 2023, state officials—including California State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond and California Attorney General Rob Bonta—acted swiftly to stop it, arguing that students have a constitutional right to privacy from their parents in California and that “transgender students may suffer from being ‘outed’ to their parents against their will.” The Attorney General ultimately sued Chino Valley along with other districts who refused to hide information from parents claiming these policies violated the California Constitution and other State laws.

SPPO has offered CDE the opportunity to voluntarily resolve its FERPA violations. But Hell will freeze over before Governor Gavin Newsom, California school officials and Democrats politicians agree to leave your kids alone – it’s going to take legal action from the U.S. Department of Justice.