gender identity

Ed. Dept. to California: Hiding Students’ ‘Gender Identity’ From Parents is Illegal

The California Department of Education (CDE) is violating federal law by hiding information about students’ “gender identity” from parents, the U.S. Department of Education found last week.

The department’s Student Privacy Policy Office concluded 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.” 

In a press release announcing the findings, U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon explained: 

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. … School personnel have even bragged about facilitating “gender transitions,” and shared strategies to target minors and conceal information about children from their own families. 

McMahon added that this deprived parents of their rights, pointedly stating: 

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.

In July 2024, Governor Gavin Newsom signed into law AB 1955, euphemistically labeled the “SAFETY Act” — “Support Academic Futures and Equality for Today’s Youth.” 

That bill states: 

All pupils deserve to feel safe, supported, and affirmed for who they are at school.  Choosing when to “come out” by disclosing an LGBTQ+ identity, and to whom, are deeply personal decisions, impacting health and safety as well as critical relationships, that every LGBTQ+ person has the right to make for themselves.

According to the CDE website, AB 1955 banned “forced outing,” stating that employees “shall not be required 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 state or federal law.” 

The SAFETY Act also invalidated any policies requiring school employees to disclose information about a student’s “sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression” to their parents. 

The U.S. Education Department found that AB 1955 “directly violates parents’ rights under FERPA to inspect all education records related to their minor children.” 

The department cited a report from The Daily Caller that “at least 300 students in California were put on ‘Gender Support Plans,’ many without parental consent or knowledge.”

California Family Council President Jonathan Keller noted the importance of the Education Department’s actions for parents, saying, “Today’s finding by the Department of Education confirms what California parents have known all along: the state has been abusing its power to cut moms and dads out of the most important decisions in their children’s lives.” 

Keller added, “Parents have the legal and moral right to know what schools are doing with their children.” 

The Student Privacy Policy Office is asking the CDE to “voluntarily resolve its FERPA violations” by, among other actions: 

• “Issuing a notice to all superintendents and administrators informing them that “gender support plans” or other related documentation directly related to a student are considered education records under FERPA and are subject to parental inspection upon request.

• “Publicizing that there is no ‘unofficial records’ exception to FERPA and further notifying superintendents and administrators that AB 1955, as well as any other California laws, regulations, or policies, should not be interpreted to undermine or contradict federal law.

• “Adding FERPA training content to state-mandated “LGBTQ cultural competency training”for teachers and other certificated employees.” 

The U.S. Department of Education also told the state that future violations of FERPA could lead to loss of federal funds. That money totaled about $8 billion in 2024-2025, EdSource reported, about 6% of California’s K-12 funding. 

Related articles and resources: 

Department of Education Launches Multiple Investigations Into Title IX Violations

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DoEd Finds Northern Virginia School Districts Violated Title IX

Education Department Warns Colorado: Children ‘Do Not Belong to Government’

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More Hospitals Stop Mutilation of Sexually Confused Children

More hospitals and health systems announced they are stopping the chemical and surgical mutilation of children with sexual identity confusion. 

Rady Children’s Hospital in San Diego, Lurie Children’s Hospital in Arlington Heights, Illinois, and Children’s Hospital and UW Health in Wisconsin said they would no longer offer puberty blockers, opposite-sex hormones and surgeries to minors. 

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported an announcement from Children’s Hospital Wisconsin: 

We strongly believe everyone, including LGBTQ+ kids, should be treated with the support, respect, dignity and compassion they deserve. We are communicating to patients that due to escalating legal and federal regulatory risk facing systems and providers across the nation, we are currently unable to provide gender affirming pharmacologic care.

In San Diego, the local NBC affiliate reported that Rady Children’s was “under federal investigation by the Health and Human Services’ Inspector General.” 

The outlet reported that a fifteen-year-old girl named Evelyn, who identifies as “nonbinary” and goes by the name “Enfys,” was scheduled for a double mastectomy at the children’s hospital, but the shutdown protected her from this body-mutilating surgery. 

For now, at least, this teenage girl, caught in “transgender” ideology, will not have perfectly healthy organs cut off.  

These “gender clinics” have joined at least 33 hospitals and medical facilities across the country that stopped treating confused minors with destructive transgender procedures in 2025, reports Do No Harm, a pro-child group of medical professionals, patients and policy makers. 

Many hospitals have said they are “pausing” such interventions, so that a change in federal policies means they would again start sterilizing and mutilating minors.

“Gender clinics” began backing away from attempting to make children look like the opposite sex after President Donald J. Trump signed an executive order on January 28, 2025, Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation. 

The order explained the need to end the use of destructive puberty blockers, opposite-sex hormones and surgeries for children with sexual identity confusion: 

Across the country today, medical professionals are maiming and sterilizing a growing number of impressionable children under the radical and false claim that adults can change a child’s sex through a series of irreversible medical interventions. This dangerous trend will be a stain on our Nation’s history, and it must end.

The executive order went on to explain federal policy toward these damaging medical interventions: 

Accordingly, it is the policy of the United States that it will not fund, sponsor, promote, assist, or support the so-called “transition” of a child from one sex to another, and it will rigorously enforce all laws that prohibit or limit these destructive and life-altering procedures.

Every federal agency “that provides research or education grants to medical institutions, including medical schools and hospitals” was directed to “immediately take appropriate steps to ensure that institutions receiving Federal research or education grants end the chemical and surgical mutilation of children.”

The executive order was enough to bring almost immediate shutdowns of children’s gender clinics, including at Children’s Hospital, in Washington, D.C.; Children’s Hospital Los Angeles; and Virginia Commonwealth University Health & Children’s Hospital of Richmond. 

The executive order also directed the Department of Justice to investigate “any entity that may be misleading the public about long-term side effects of chemical and surgical mutilation.” 

Attorney General Pam Bondi followed that directive with an April 2025 memorandum to DOJ agencies, including the FBI, titled “Preventing the Mutilation of American Children.” 

DOJ agencies were told to investigate groups, including medical professionals, for “junk science and false claims about the effects of so-called ‘gender-affirming care’ to justify the barbaric practice of surgically and chemically maiming and sterilizing children.”

That led the FBI, in June 2025, to post an announcement asking people to “report tips of any hospitals, clinics, or practitioners performing these surgical procedures on children.” 

Those further actions by the federal agencies led to even more medical facilities halting the mutilation of minors. 

Nineteen states and radical LGBT activist groups like Lambda Legal, the American Civil Liberties Union, and PFLAG (formerly Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays) have filed three lawsuits attacking Trump’s executive order. Although judges have blocked enforcement of the order, the DOJ continues to investigate hospitals and doctors who harm children. 

While the Trump administration and 25 states have taken action to prevent these harmful medical interventions, the opposition to safeguarding children demonstrates that Christians and conservatives must continue to work against transgender ideology. 

As Christians, we must have compassion on children — and adults — struggling with sexual identity confusion. But true compassion means protecting those struggling from harmful and damaging drugs, hormones and surgeries.

Related articles and resources: 

Children’s Hospital Los Angeles Shuts Down Harmful ‘Center for Transyouth’

Chloe Cole: Gender Reassignment Surgery Regret

Counseling Consultation & Referrals

Doctor Refuses to Publish Major Study Finding Puberty-Blocking Drugs Don’t Help Children

FBI Investigates Three Major Hospitals for Mutilating Children

FDA Sends Warning Letters to Companies Promoting Sex-Rejecting Breast Binders

FTC Begins Investigating ‘Gender-Affirming’ Medical Community for Deception, False Advertising

HHS Will Block Hospitals From Performing Sex-Rejecting, Mutilating Procedures on Children

Key Takeaways from Supreme Court Case on ‘Transgender’ Interventions

President Trump Signs Order Protecting Children From Transgender Medical Interventions

Sign These Three Ballot Petitions to Protect Kids and Parental Rights in Colorado

Transgender Resources

Understanding “Transgenderism”

The WPATH Files Exposes ‘Surgical and Hormonal Experiments on Children’

The WPATH Files – Transgender Interventions Are ‘Unethical Medical Experiments’

California Schools May Not Hide Students’ ‘Gender Identity’ From Parents

A U.S. District Court affirmed parents’ fundamental constitutional rights and blocked California schools from hiding information about a child’s “gender identity” from them.

Judge Roger T. Benitez’ decision also affirmed the religious liberty and free speech of teachers, saying the legislators and the California Department of Education (CDOE) could not force teachers to lie to parents or hide their children’s sexual identity confusion from them.

In addition to striking down California’s “parental exclusion policies,” the judge also made some critically true comments about parents’ rights and transgenderism.

It’s a huge victory in the fight against government tyranny in the Golden State, as legislators and agencies have run roughshod over parents and children in their effort to support “transgender” ideology.

Judge Benitez, a George W. Bush appointee, stated that the class action lawsuit involved four fundamental legal questions:

  • First, do parents have a right to gender information based on the Fourteenth Amendment’s substantive due process clause? 
  • Second, do parents have a right to gender information protected by the First Amendment’s free exercise of religion clause? 
  • Third, do religious public school teachers have a right to provide gender information to parents based on the First Amendment’s free exercise clause? 
  • Fourth, do public school teachers have a right to communicate accurate gender information to parents based on the First Amendment free speech clause?

The judge emphatically responded to these questions:

In each case, this Court concludes that, as a matter of law, the answer is “yes.”
Parents have a right to receive gender information and teachers have a right to provide to parents accurate information about a child’s gender identity.

In a press release touting the significance of the decision, Thomas More Society Special Counsel Paul M. Jonna, a partner at LiMandri & Jonna LLP, stated:

Today’s incredible victory finally, and permanently, ends California’s dangerous and unconstitutional regime of gender secrecy policies in schools.
The Court’s comprehensive ruling – granting summary judgment on all claims – protects all California parents, students, and teachers, and it restores sanity and common sense. With this decisive ruling from Judge Benitez, all state and local school officials that mandate gender secrecy policies should cease all enforcement or face severe legal consequences.

The case began in April 2023 when the Thomas More Society brought a lawsuit on behalf of Elizabeth Mirabelli and Lori Ann West, teachers at Rincon Middle School, against the Escondido Unified School District “over policies requiring them to keep secrets from, and even lie to, parents about their minor-age students.”

The Southern California school district, according to that lawsuit, required school staff to  “unhesitatingly accept a child’s assertion of a transgender or gender diverse identity.” Its “gender” policy added, “There’s no requirement for parent or caretaker agreement or even for knowledge.”

School staff were told “that ‘revealing a student’s transgender status to individuals who do not have a legitimate need for the information, without the student’s consent’ is prohibited,” adding that “parents or caretakers … do not have a legitimate need for the information.”

The complaint said the Southern California school district’s requirements “violate teachers’ free speech and free exercise of religion rights,” as well as parents’ rights to raise and care for their children.

In September 2023 Judge Benitez issued a preliminary injunction against the Escondido District policy, and in 2024 the suit was expanded into a class action lawsuit on behalf of parents and teachers across the state.

In this most recent decision, which applies to the entire state, Judge Benitez made some important statements about parents and children, transgender ideology, and the state.

First, he noted that California used “the privacy clause of the state constitution and other state anti-discrimination laws” to defend parental exclusion policies.

Judge Benitez said this was “upside-down,” elevating children’s “state-created right to privacy” above “parents’ federal constitutional right to care for and raise their children.”

He quoted 2000 Supreme Court decision Troxel v. Granville:

It is cardinal with us that the custody, care and nurture of the child reside first in the parents, whose primary function and freedom include preparation for obligations the state can neither supply nor hinder. 

Second, transgender activists and their allies have tried to label a parent not agreeing with a child’s rejection of their sex as “abuse.” But the judge clearly stated, “Disagreement is not abuse, and the court so finds.”

In fact, not informing parents about a child’s sexual identity confusion can create serious harms. Judge Benitez pointed to three cases where hiding sexual identity confusion from parents led to serious harm to children, including increased anxiety, depression and suicidality.

Third, the judge was clear that “social transitioning,” where a child chooses a name and clothing of the opposite sex, is not a benign act, but is actually a medical decision – especially since it affects a child’s mental health.

Benitez referenced a decision from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals that made this point, the court noting the medical goal of dealing with mental distress.

But the state of California claimed that social transitioning is a mere “polite social courtesy,” not medical care.

Judge Benitez said that “whether expressing gender incongruence is pathological or healthy, or, whether social transitioning is or is not a medical procedure” does not matter, opining, “The question is whether being involved in potentially serious medical or psychological decision-making for their school student is a parent’s constitutional right.”    

His simple response: “It is.”

Finally, the judge debunked the lie from “experts” that “a child’s gender identity is innate,” stating:

TEXT HERE

The Daily Citizen is thankful for the teachers who fought California’s unjust, unconstitutional policies; the Thomas More Society for taking the case; and Judge Roger T. Benitez for his informed, intelligent decision.

The case is Mirabelli v. Olson.

Related articles and resources:

BREAKING: Judge Issues Preliminary Injunction Says California School District Cannot Force Teachers to Lie to Parents About Their Children’s ‘Gender Identity’

California Teachers Told to Hide Information About Students’ ‘Gender’ From Parents – They’re Suing

Exclusive Interview: Colorado Parents Expose ‘Gender Cult’ at Public School in New Documentary

Florida Parents Sue School for Helping Teen ‘Transition’ – Without Their Knowledge or Consent

Homosexuality Resources

Six California School Districts Pass Parental Notification Policies for Children Confused About Their Sexual Identity

Supreme Court Declines to Hear Colorado Case on Parental Rights, Still Considering Two Similar Cases

Transgender Resources

What’s Your School District’s ‘Transgender’ Policy?