Federal judge strikes down rules allowing schools to hide gender ‘transitions’ from parents

CNA Staff, Dec 23, 2025 / 10:07 am

A federal judge in California this week issued a permanent block against the state’s “gender secrecy policies” that have allowed schools to hide children’s so-called “gender transitions” from their parents.

U.S. District Court Judge Roger Benitez issued the ruling in the class action lawsuit on Dec. 22, holding that parents “have a right” to the “gender information” of their children, while teachers themselves also possess the right to provide parents with that information.

The order strikes down secretive policies in school districts across California that allowed schools to conceal when a child began identifying as the opposite sex or another LGBT-related identity.

Benitez had allowed the legal dispute to proceed as a class action lawsuit in October. School districts in California “are ultimately state agents under state control,” the judge said at the time, and the issue of settling “statewide policy” meant the class action structure would be “superior to numerous individual actions by individual parents and teachers.”

The case, Benitez said on Dec. 22, concerns “a parent’s rights to information … against a public school’s policy of secrecy when it comes to a student’s gender identification.”

Parents, he said, have a right to such information on grounds of the 14th and First Amendments, he said, while teachers can assert similar First Amendment rights in sharing that information with parents.

Teachers have historically informed parents of “physical injuries or questions about a student’s health and well-being,” the judge pointed out, yet lawmakers in California have enacted policies “prohibiting public school teachers from informing parents” when their child claims to have an LGBT identity.

“Even if [the government] could demonstrate that excluding parents was good policy on some level, such a policy cannot be implemented at the expense of parents’ constitutional rights,” Benitez wrote.

The Thomas More Society, a religious liberty legal group, said in a press release that the decision “protects all California parents, students, and teachers” and “restores sanity and common sense.”

School officials in California who work to conceal “gender identity” decisions from parents “should cease all enforcement or face severe legal consequences,” attorney Paul Jonna said in the release.

Elizabeth Mirabelli and Lori Ann West, the Christian teachers who originally brought the suit, said they were “profoundly grateful” for the decision.

“This victory is not just ours. It is a win for honesty, transparency, and the fundamental rights of teachers and parents,” they said.

The Thomas More Society said on Dec. 22 that California officials had gone to “extreme lengths” to “evade responsibility” for their policies, up to and including claiming that the gender secrecy rules were no longer enforced even as they were allegedly continuing to require them.

Gender- and LGBT-related school policies have come under fire over the past year from the White House. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in August directed U.S. states to remove gender ideology material from their curricula or else face the loss of federal funding.

In February the Department of Education launched an investigation into several Virginia school districts to determine if they violated federal orders forbidding schools from supporting the so-called “transition” of children.

In December, meanwhile, a Catholic school student in Virginia forced a school district to concede a lawsuit she brought alleging that her constitutional rights had been violated when the school subjected her to “extreme social pressure” to affirm transgender ideology.

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