California Attorney General Rob Bonta filed a lawsuit Monday against the Chino Valley Unified School District for approving a policy that requires school officials to inform parents if their child wants to change their gender.
The district’s board of education approved the policy in July after many parents weighed in, some in favor and some against, but the district was slapped with a subpoena after Bonta opened a civil rights investigation in August, according to a press release.
Bonta took the investigation a step further by filing a lawsuit, arguing that his office’s “message” was “loud and clear,” according to a statement in a press release.
“Every student has the right to learn and thrive in a school environment that promotes safety, privacy, and inclusivity—regardless of their gender identity,” Bonta said. “We’re in court challenging Chino Valley Unified’s forced outing policy for wrongfully and unconstitutionally discriminating against and violating the privacy rights of LGBTQ+ students. The forced outing policy wrongfully endangers the physical, mental, and emotional well-being of non-conforming students who lack an accepting environment in the classroom and at home.”
In addition to informing parents about name and pronoun changes, the policy requires that the school informs them if their child is “accessing sex-segregated school programs and activities” or using bathrooms that don’t match their biological sex, according to the rule. The lawsuit, however, claims that the district “singled out” transgender and “gender nonconforming” students through the policy’s “discriminatory treatment.”
A district spokesperson told the Daily Caller News Foundation that they were complying with the subpoena request but had not had the “opportunity to examine the lawsuit.”
“At this time, the District is working with its legal counsel to review the lawsuit and its contents,” the spokesperson said. “Prior to the filing, District personnel had been working with complete transparency in providing Attorney General Bonta’s office with requested documents and records. Superintendent [Norm] Enfield spoke with the [Department of Justice’s] legal counsel weekly to confirm the District was providing requested files, which had changed several times from the original subpoena.”
Originally published by the Daily Caller News Foundation
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