By The Vanguard
OAKLAND, CA – Yet another California school district—Murrieta Valley Unified School District in Riverside County—has decided to implement a mandatory gender identity disclosure policy “harmful to the well-being of LGBTQ+ students,” according to a statement by California Attorney General Rob Bonta Friday.
“The enacted policy requires schools to inform parents, with minimal exceptions, whenever a student requests to use a name or pronoun different from that on their birth certificate or official records, even without the student’s permission,” according to a statement by the DOJ.
The DOJ added, “The policy also requires notification if a student requests to use facilities or participates in programs that don’t align with their sex on official records. The vote comes days after Attorney General Bonta announced opening a civil rights investigation into potential legal violations by Chino Valley Unified School District’s adoption of an identical mandatory gender identity disclosure policy.”
About Murrieta—the third largest school district in Riverside County—Bonta said, “I am deeply disturbed to learn another school district has put at risk the safety and privacy of transgender and gender nonconforming students by adopting a forced outing policy. My office remains committed to ensuring school policies do not target or seek to discriminate against California’s most vulnerable communities. California will not stand for violations of our students’ civil rights.”
The DOJ said the AG has “substantial interest in protecting the legal rights, physical safety, and mental health of children in California schools, and in protecting them from trauma, harassment, bullying, and exposure to violence and threats of violence.”
The DOJ statement added, “Research shows that protecting a transgender student’s ability to make choices about how and when to inform others is critical to their well-being, as transgender students are exposed to high levels of harassment and mistreatment at school and in their communities…77 percent of students known or perceived as transgender reported negative experiences such as harassment and assault, and over half of transgender and nonbinary youth reported seriously considering suicide in the past year.”
Bonta in July sent a letter to the CVUSD Superintendent Norman Enfield and the Board of Education warning of the “dangers of adopting its forced outing policy, emphasizing the potential infringements on students’ privacy rights and educational opportunities.”
The AG noted Murrieta’s similar move Friday but did not say what action, or if an investigation like in the case of CVUSD, is planned.
