California Governor Gavin Newsom signed the Gender Identity Protection Act (AB 1955) into law on July 15, prohibiting schools from disclosing a student’s gender identity to anyone, including parents, without the student’s consent. This is the first time a law has been enacted in the U.S. that prohibits schools from notifying students to protect their gender identity over their parents’ right to know.
Under the new law, parents will no longer be notified if their child changes their gender identity at school. It covers kindergarten through high school (grades K-12) and prohibits “forced disclosure” rules. Teachers will also be protected from retaliation for supporting the rights of transgender students. In addition, the state Department of Education must provide parents and students with resources for managing conversations about gender and identity privately.
The new law was proposed in May in response to decisions by local school boards in some conservative areas, including Chino Valley and Temecula, to require parents to be notified when students want to change their name or pronouns, and use facilities or participate in programs that do not match their genders of official records.
The state attorney general’s office had sued the school board at the time, arguing that the policy could cause “immediate and irreparable harm” to LGBTQ youth and violate students’ privacy rights.
“Teachers should not be gender police and should not violate the trust and safety of students in the classroom,” the bill’s sponsor, state Assemblymember Chris Ward, said in a statement on July 15, emphasizing that ”parents should have conversations with their children, and it should be up to the student to decide if they want to come out to their family.”
Supporters of the bill also hailed the law, saying it would empower students to defend their gender identity.
On the other hand, conservative organizations, including the California Family Council, have pushed back against the bill, saying it infringes on parental rights. The Korean-American community, which campaigned to defeat the bill, has voiced concerns.
“We’ve been campaigning against the bill’s signing since three weeks ago, but we’re not surprised by the outcome,” said Jinah Yi, president and founder of Protect Next Generation. “It’s time for parents to be lied to by schools,” she said, adding, “As the issue of gender identity has grown, so have the number of families struggling with related issues, and now parents must be proactive in communicating with their children to protect them.”
Following Newsom’s signing of the bill, Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced on July 16 that he will move the headquarters of his companies X (formerly Twitter) and SpaceX to Texas, as did Tesla. “SpaceX will now move its headquarters from Hawthorne, California to Starbase, Texas,” Musk wrote on his X account, “and X headquarters will also move to Austin.”
Musk’s announcement was accompanied by a post from another user criticizing AB 1955, which Newsom signed the day before. “I made it clear to Governor Newsom over a year ago that laws of this nature would force families and businesses to leave California to protect their children,” Musk wrote.
“I have had enough of dodging gangs of violent drug addicts just to get in and out of the building,” he said, citing the company’s decision to move its headquarters from San Francisco to Austin.
Since 2020, eight states, including Indiana and Tennessee, have passed school gender notification policies, and five states require students to “disclose their gender identity,” according to The Hill.
BY NICOLE CHANG, HOONSIK WOO [chang.nicole@koreadaily.com]
