(LifeSiteNews) — California Democrat Attorney General Rob Bonta has filed a complaint against the Trump administration Department of Education (DOE) over its requirement that schools keep parents informed if their children identify as a gender other than their true sex.
Courthouse News reports that, late last month, the DOE notified the state that several of its schools had been found to be non-compliant with the federal Family Educational Rights & Privacy Act, putting their federal funding at risk unless they made changes such as permitting localities to adopt “pro-parental notification approaches.”
That Act states that no federal education dollars shall go to any educational entity “which has a policy of denying, or which effectively prevents, the parents of students who are or have been in attendance at a school of such agency or at such institution, as the case may be, the right to inspect and review the education records of their children”; with “education records” defined as any materials in a school’s possession that “contain information directly related to a student.”
Bonta’s complaint claims the government “failed to demonstrate even a single violation of FERPA: they do not cite even one instance in which any LEA failed to disclose education records that state a student’s gender identity – or any other record – in response to a valid parental request under FERPA.” It also denies that “gender support plans” constitute “education records” under the law.
California stands to lose $4.9 billion in education assistance if the Trump action is allowed to stand.
“The school is putting itself right in the middle of the relationship between parent and child and pitting them against each other,” responded Greg Burt, vice president of the California Family Council. “You are turning faith-based parents into the enemy that Bonta thinks he has to protect the kids from.”
A large body of evidence shows that “affirming” gender confusion carries serious harms, especially when done with impressionable children who lack the mental development, emotional maturity, and life experience to consider the long-term ramifications of the decisions being pushed on them, or full knowledge about the long-term effects of life-altering, physically-transformative, and often irreversible surgical and chemical procedures.
Studies find that more than 80 percent of children suffering gender dysphoria outgrow it on their own by late adolescence and that “transition” procedures fails to resolve gender-confused individuals’ heightened tendency to engage in self-harm and suicide – and even exacerbate it, including by reinforcing their confusion and neglecting the actual root causes of their mental strife.
The indoctrination of children with left-wing ideology on sexuality, race, and other agenda items has long been a major concern in American public schools, from libraries to drag events to classroom materials to even “transitioning” troubled children without parental input. Many schools have also displayed hostility to the rights and employment of individual teachers who refuse to go along with such agendas.
The Trump administration has taken steps to depoliticize public education, including by ordering the elimination of federal funds to schools that continue diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs and by reversing the Biden administration’s infusion of gender ideology into Title IX rules.