California’s War On Parents

An article in City Journal (20-Sep-2023) by Mark Schneider, founder and president of Protect Our Kids

Policymakers believe the state, not parents, holds authority over children when it comes to sex and gender issues — but families are pushing back.

A promising revolt has begun in California. Seven school districts there have recently passed parental-notification policies. And not a moment too soon. As many parents are discovering, the local school board is the one place where they can effect positive change in their children’s public schools — if, that is, the state doesn’t find a way to stop them.

Notification policies require that school officials inform parents in a timely fashion about certain occurrences in their children’s lives. These typically include a child bullying someone or being bullied, giving evidence of suicidal ideation, or identifying with a nonbiological gender. It is this last point upon which a storm of reaction has ensued by state officials. In July, during policy deliberations by the Chino Valley Unified School District (CVUSD), the first of the seven districts to pass such measures, Tony Thurmond, California’s superintendent of schools, made a personal appearance to warn the board against its passage. Fortunately, and under the leadership of board president Sonja Shaw, the board passed the policy by a vote of four to one. A month later, California Attorney General Rob Bonta filed an action against CVUSD in Superior Court for declaratory and injunctive relief. Additional lawsuits are all but certain. In the meantime, vitriol and death threats have been leveled against an embattled school board member for exercising what was once regarded as common sense.

What’s behind California’s hostility to parents being apprised of their children’s gender identity? It stems from two central presumptions.

The first is that nonbinary gender identification is an essential good that must be encouraged. As stated on California’s Department of Education’s Health website, “gender and sexuality are a continuum, they are often fluid, and they do not fit neatly into categories.” This belief is official state orthodoxy with roots that go back more than 20 years — much further than most people realize. In 2000, California’s Education Code redefined gender to include “a person’s gender identity and gender related appearance and behavior whether or not stereotypically associated with the person’s assigned sex at birth” (AB-537). Seven years later, schools were required to teach that gender is a choice and that acting otherwise is a form of legal discrimination (SB-777). In 2013, the passage of AB-1266 required that schools open their bathrooms and changing facilities to students who identify with the opposite sex. Two years after that, the Orwellian-sounding California Healthy Youth Act (AB-329) mandated that subjective gender identification be advanced in the public schools, starting in middle school. The Menstrual Equity Act (AB-367) became law in 2021, requiring that free menstrual products be provided in what used to be boy’s bathrooms. And last year, State Senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) pushed through SB-107making California the first “gender affirming care” sanctuary state.

Currently sitting on Governor Gavin Newsom’s desk is a quartet of bills that will force the state’s teachers to acquire LGBTQ “cultural competency” (AB-5), allow a “professional person” (broadly defined) to decide if parents should be informed about mental-health treatment or counseling being provided to their children (AB-665), limit school boards from removing overtly sexualized narratives from school libraries (AB-1078), and characterize parents’ refusal to support their kid’s subjective gender identities as a form of “child abuse” (AB-957). Unless Newsom vetoes them, these bills will all become law.

The second presumption is that, on matters concerning sex and gender, the state holds authority over a child’s life, not parents. The aforementioned SB-107 and the quartet of bills that will soon take effect in California make this plain. During debate on the Orange Unified School District’s proposed parental notification policy, opposing board member Kris Erickson stated that “parents do have expansive rights and they should; but they don’t own their children . . . There are certain rules that still apply, and children still have the rights, and we have a duty to protect their health, welfare, and their education.” Maybe so. But aiding and abetting a child’s sexual transition is something entirely different. In California, however, the state presumes to decide what’s in that child’s best interest. Any objection must be motivated by animus. That’s Bonta’s position. As stated in the attorney general’s complaint against the Chino Valley School District, “the Board’s plain motivations in adopting [the parent notification] Policy 5020.1 were to create and harbor animosity, discrimination, and prejudice towards these transgender and gender nonconforming students, without any compelling reason to do so.”

The decision will be challenged, with the ultimate legal determination awaiting a ruling from the nation’s highest court. Meanwhile, those opposed to parental notification policies should ask themselves what new insight has arisen — scientific, moral, or spiritual — to justify telling children that they were born in the wrong body, and, further, what would warrant taking such a discussion out of the hands of parents. Absent credible answers, state officials should stay out of the gender-transition business.

From the Cheap Seats: The People Are Not Sovereign

An article posted to California Globe (20-Jun-2024) by Garvin Walsh

While the reasoning behind the Court’s opinion is transparent,

elements within it warrant dispute or criticism

The Court rejected the already-qualified ballot initiative known as the Taxpayer Protection and Government Accountability Act (“TPA”). The Secretary of State has been ordered to not put the measure on the ballot. The opinion can be accessed via this link.

The most significant element of the TPA, intended to preserve taxpayer protections already enacted via initiative and to constrain the growth of the tax burden, would have required a majority of the electorate to approve tax increases or additional fees and charges.

The Court’s rejection of the measure relies on distinctions it has previously drawn between the meanings of the words “revise” and “amend”.  It echoed an 1894 holding that “the provisions contained [in the Constitution] for its revision indicate the will of the people that the underlying principles upon which it rests, as well as the substantial entirety of the instrument, shall be of a like permanent and abiding nature. On the other hand, the significance of the term ‘amendment’ implies such an addition or change within the lines of the original instrument as will effect an improvement, or better carry out the purpose for which it was framed.”

The Court found that “[t]he TPA would shift so much authority, in such a significant manner, that it would substantially alter our framework of government…[accomplishing] such far reaching changes in the nature of our basic governmental plan as to amount to a revision” of the Constitution.

Some comfort may be found in the holding that “[w]hether any individual component of the TPA would constitute a revision standing alone is a question we do not answer here.” A narrow, targeted measure might enable the people to impose further limits on taxation analogous to those of Proposition 13.

The decision also rests on other grounds, including a purported shift of power between the legislative and executive branches, the notion that the proposed measure would impede critical government operations, constraints upon the legislature’s ability to delegate tasks to various agencies, and interference with the administrative process of local fee setting and collection. 

While the reasoning behind the Court’s opinion is transparent, elements within it warrant dispute or criticism. The lack of a dissenting opinion is also troubling – does that reflect wisdom in the decision or the fact that the Court consists of uniformly liberal appointees?  Six of the seven justices were appointed by our most recent Democrat governors, with one appointed by Governor Schwarzenegger.

As a practical matter, the meaning of the Court’s rejection of the TPA is that the achievement of constraints on the legislature’s taxing power will require a two-thirds vote of both houses of the legislature to either 1) put a measure on the ballot for approval by the voters, or 2) hold a constitutional convention, the product of which would also require voter approval. Let that sink in: meaningful constraint on the taxing power of the legislature will require a supermajority of both the Senate and Assembly to voluntarily diminish their most precious political power. Don’t hold your breath.

As always, the only way for the people to exercise their sovereign power is at the ballot box, infrequent occasions involving campaigns which are costly to undertake and which are dependent upon the favor of both fierce partisans and low-information voters. Meanwhile, between elections, the legislative process continues behind the scenes, corrupted by the legislature’s self-serving impulse to tax and spend, by the financial support of rent-seekers and lobbyists, and by the lazy impulse to indulge ill-conceived and incompetent interventions concocted by the administrative state.

In California both houses of the legislature suffer with Democrat supermajorities, lately dominated by the progressive wing of the party, so the constructive give and take between parties which might yield better and fewer laws does not occur. The characteristic impulse of the left to expand the power and influence of the government continues unabated. There is only one way to overcome this cancerous condition: throw the bums out. Deprive the Democrats of their supermajorities by electing enough Republican legislators for the GOP to become a partner in the legislative process. 

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Think on this...

THE PROMOTION OF SEXUAL INTIMACY, SEXUAL ORIENTATION AND

FLUID GENDER IDENTITIES ARE MATTERS FAR EXCEEDING

THE RIGHTFUL BOUNDARIES OF THE PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM.

SO TOO IS THE ADVANCEMENT OF MARXIST CRITICAL THEORY AND

THE "RE-FRAMING" OF AMERICAN HISTORY TO INDOCTRINATE CHILDREN

INTO POLITICALLY DRIVEN AND MISLEADING NARRATIVES.

- Protect Our Kids

THE BOYS [AND GIRLS] OF THE RISING GENERATION ARE TO BE THE MEN [AND
WOMEN] OF THE NEXT, AND THE SOLE GUARDIANS OF THE PRINCIPLES WE DELIVER
OVER TO THEM

- Thomas Jefferson

IT IS ONLY WHEN THE PEOPLE BECOME IGNORANT AND CORRUPT,

WHEN THEY DEGENERATE INTO A POPULACE, THAT THEY ARE

INCAPABLE OF EXERCISING THEIR SOVEREIGNTY.

USURPATION IS THEN AN EASY ATTAINMENT, AND A USERPER SOON FOUND.

THE PEOPLE THEMSELVES BECOME THE WILLING INSTRUMENTS OF THEIR OWN DEBASEMENT AND RUIN. LET US, THEN, LOOK TO THE GREAT CAUSE,

AND ENDEAVOR TO PRESERVE IT IN FULL FORCE. LET US BY ALL

WISE AND CONSTITUTIONAL MEASURES PROMOTE INTELLIGENCE AMONG THE PEOPLE

AS THE BEST MEANS OF PRESERVING OUR LIBERTIES.

- James Monroe

Moms for Liberty Santa Clara County operates as a 501(c)(4) nonprofit organization.

The organization's primary mission is to organize, educate and empower parents
to defend their parental rights at all levels of government.

Visit us at https://momsforlibertysantaclara.com
Email us at MomsForLibertySCC@gmail.com

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