Anatomy of a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad law: CA bill AB 1955: The “Support Academic Futures and Educators for Today’s Youth" act.
A new California law that purportedly protects gender diverse children and supports their families -- while actually doing the opposite.
On Monday, July 15, Governor Gavin Newsom of California signed into law CA bill AB 1955, the clunkily named “Support Academic Futures and Educators for Today’s Youth Act” (so named in order to give it an easily-remembered and duplicitously suggestive acronym: The SAFETY Act). The law has been widely criticized, and strongly defended – and one thing I have learned is that when there is a controversy about a new law (e.g., Florida’s “don’t say gay” law that never mentions the word “gay” and doesn’t ban what most people think it bans), it is always useful to read what the law actual says. So, although I’ve read the bill and will try to summarize it briefly – here is a link to the bill so you can read it for yourself if you are so inclined.
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=202320240AB1955
Summary of the bill
1. Schools or school districts may not have a policy requiring that teachers (and others) inform parents about a student's LGBTQ + (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and/or questioning) identity. The law does not define lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, or questioning, and doesn’t give even a hint what the “+” at the end of the list could possibly refer to — making the bill potentially extremely expansive in its application.
2. Teachers are forbidden from informing parents about a student's LGBTQ+ status without receiving permission to do so from the student. According to the law, students have a right to privacy, and by implication, a teacher who "outs" a student's LGBTQ+ status to the student’s parents (or anyone else) has violated that student's right to privacy.
3. Teachers who actively work with students to help them keep their LGBTQ+ status secret from the parents cannot be subjected to any form of punishment for having done so.
As I assume is fairly obvious, this is not a parents’ or family rights law (efforts by Newsom’s office to characterize it as such notwithstanding). It is also not a student safety law, unless one believes that enabling schools to secretly collude with students to place students on a path toward castration or mastectomies is a way of keeping the students safe. Parents in general hate the law. Teachers, on the other hand, love it — because that’s really what it is – a teacher protection law. Under this law, teachers who believe in transgender ideology are free to not just permit children to socially transition to a different gender at school but may encourage that transition — without having to inform parents and without having to fear any kind of sanctioning for their actions.
One other important point to note about the law is that in almost all cases of reference to students in the law, the law refers to “LGBTQ+” students – as if this grouping defines a coherent category of students. Of course — it doesn’t. The fact that, for legal purposes, transgender students are being considered to share essential characteristics with lesbian and gay students – and therefore must receive the same protections under the law as do gay and lesbian students – reflects the remarkable success of the strategy adopted by the transgender activist community of essentially hijacking the success of the LGB rights movement in the service of creating special rights for transgender individuals. My guess is that, in the minds of most people, there is no logical reason NOT to attach a “T” to “LGB” and to consider them all as a single group, a phenomenon that reflects how effective the trans activist strategy has been. The problem is that T is very different from LGB; T refers to a feature of our identity, whereas LGB refers to the nature of our sexual attraction. Indeed, conceptually T is orthogonal to LGB, in the sense that there can be transwomen who are attracted to having sex with women and transwomen who are attracted to having sex with men (and trans men may be gay or “straight”). But by attaching T to LGB to create the single category “LGBT”, the trans activist community has been successful in harnessing the success of, and widespread support for, the gay rights movement, but in this case, in the service of their own agenda – one that, ironically, is widely considered WITHIN the LGB community to be homophobic.
Justifications for the law
Like all California legislative bills, the main body of the bill is preceded by a listing of statements of justification under the heading “The Legislature finds and declares all of the following”. If one accepts all of these statements as reasonable, evidence-based, and accurate, then the law itself may – to some degree (but only to some degree, since no matter what the justification, it remains a teacher protection law) – be considered reasonable. I don’t agree that the statements of justification are themselves reasonable, true and accurate – and if the justifications are themselves not valid, then the whole foundation for the law falls apart.
Some of the justification statements are copied below (in italics), followed by my critique (in standard font). But first, it’s worth noting that the CA legislature did not even claim that they have good evidence to support each of these declarations; they are simply stating that THEY believe and accept the statements as true.
Affirming school environments significantly reduce the odds of transgender youth attempting suicide, according to The Trevor Project Research Brief: LGBTQ & Gender-Affirming Spaces (2020).
First – one can have an “affirming school environment” and still have a policy of informing parents if a student wants to adopt a different gender at school from the one being lived as at home. Moreover, it is now well established that the social transition of gender dysphoric children places them at dramatically increased risk of later transgender medicalization – a pathway that involves serious life-altering drug and surgical treatments.
Second – the statement regarding suicide attempt rates may be correct in the sense that it is true that this is a conclusion posted by The Trevor Project. However, The Trevor Project is a strongly biased, pro-gender-affirming-care organization, and should not be considered to be a reliable source of evidence regarding the effects of different approaches to the treatment of gender dysphoric children. Simply put – at the present time, the best available evidence is NOT supportive of the claim that gender affirming care reduces rates of suicide by gender dysphoric individuals.
Parents and families across California understand that coming out as LGBTQ+ is an extremely personal decision and want to support their children in coming out to them on their own terms.
In this case, the legislature is just making shit up. I doubt strongly that this statement is true (depending on what is meant by the ambiguous phrase “their own terms”). I strongly suspect that a large majority of parents would like their children’s schools to inform them if one of their children has indicated, at school, a strong desire to live as a different sex from the child’s natal sex, and I suspect a large majority of parents would feel betrayed by their child’s school and feel bitter about the school’s policy if their child started living at school as a sex different from the child’s natal sex WITH THE SUPPORT OF THE SCHOOL but without the school informing the parents. It should be noted that the law’s claim here is made without any reference to evidence; it is simply a completely bald statement that probably fits with the feelings of many democratic legislators in the state.
Policies that forcibly “out” pupils without their consent remove opportunities for LGBTQ+ young people and their families to build trust and have these conversations when they are ready.
Again – note the conflation of T with LGB as if everything true about sexual orientation is true about gender identity (whatever the hell that actually is). And this statement presupposes that it helps “young people and their families to build trust” by having the school actively supporting and affirming and even encouraging and celebrating gender transition at school while keeping something that important a secret from the parents. I doubt that’s the case. Seriously doubt it. On the contrary, this sounds to me like a prescription for destroying family trust and destroying the parents’ confidence that the school is doing what is best for their child.
Pupils have a constitutional right to privacy when it comes to sensitive information about them, and courts have affirmed that young people have a right to keep personal information private.
That may be true regarding sexual orientation, but if a student is living as their natal sex as a girl at home but as a boy at school, that is no longer “private” personal information – it is, in fact, very public, but simply being actively kept a secret from the parents by the school. If parents have a right (which they do) to know if their child is failing classes at school, and if parents have a right (which they do) to be informed if their child is exhibiting evidence of a serious mental disorder at school, surely they also should have the right to know if their child has started living at school with a different name and sex than the name and sex known by the parents at home.
Laws and policies that target or invite targeting of pupils on the basis of gender or sexual orientation are prohibited under state and federal law.
How is that relevant to the issue in question regarding parental notification? Do parental notification laws “invite targeting of pupils on the basis of gender or sexual orientation”? If so — how?? And there are no laws anywhere that require teachers to inform parents if a teacher suspects a student is gay or lesbian – so why is sexual orientation included in this justification — except to somewhat deflect from the statement’s problematic nature with regard to gender dysphoric children?
Attacks on the rights, safety, and dignity of transgender, gender-expansive, and other LGBTQ+ youth continue to grow across the country, including here in California. These efforts are having a measurable impact on the health and well-being of LGBTQ+ pupils, and have led to a rise in bullying, harassment, and discrimination.
Is that true (no reference to supportive evidence is provided)? What defines an “attack”? I’m guessing that this statement refers to laws being passed in other states that ban the surgical removal of a child’s healthy body parts as a form of treatment for gender dysphoria. Certainly, though, according to many who really care about the well-being of teens experiencing gender dysphoria, policies that discourage pharmaceutical and surgical changes to children’s bodies (including mastectomies and castrations) are not “attacks on the rights, safety, and dignity” of these individuals. On the contrary, it is precisely because these kinds of radical medical interventions would not be considered ethical in other contexts (e.g., it would be considered unethical to castrate a boy who wants to be a eunuch — although some supporters of “gender affirming care” would disagree) that so many other countries and states have considered such mutilations themselves to be a form of attack on the rights and safety of gender dysphoric children. And what is the evidence of a related rise in bullying, harassment, and discrimination when such laws are passed? As yet, no such evidence has emerged from countries that have banned medical “gender affirming care” procedures with children.
Musk vs Newsom
Soon after the law was signed by Newsom, Elon Musk tweeted, in reaction to the bill:
The governor of California just signed a bill causing massive destruction of parental rights and putting children at risk for permanent damage
This is the final straw.
Because of this law and the many others that preceded it, attacking both families and companies, SpaceX will now move its HQ from Hawthorne, California, to Starbase, Texas.
The goal of this diabolical law is to break the parent-child relationship and put the state in charge of your children.
Musk’s tweets, and criticisms of the law by others, then prompted a response by Newsom’s office in defense of the bill. Newsom’s statements in defense of the bill (in their entirety) are in italics below, and my comments are in standard font.
The bill @CAGovernor Newsom signed into law protects the child-parent relationship by PREVENTING politicians & school staff from inappropriately intervening in family matters & attempting to control if, when, & how families have deeply personal conversations.
This sentence PRESUPPOSES that it is inappropriate for a school to tell parents about a student's gender dysphoria without the student's permission. In that sense, it is a classic case of “begging the question”. The sentence also characterizes informing parents of a student's gender dysphoria as "intervening in family matters and attempting to control if, when, and how families have deeply personal conversations". I would not agree with this characterization of what is involved with a school informing parents that their child is living at the school as the sex different from the student's biological sex, and I doubt most parents would agree. Indeed, it seems to me to be more reasonable to claim that keeping that information secret from parents should be characterized as “intervening in family matters”.
Under California law, minors CANNOT legally change their name or gender WITHOUT parental consent & parents are GUARANTEED the right to access their students’ educational records.
OK. So what? No one is claiming that the schools are helping students make a LEGAL change of that kind. And information about a student’s LGBT status would not ever be part of a student's educational record – so this is nothing more than Newsom defending the law by saying the law doesn't do WHAT NO ONE WHO HAS CRITICIZED THE LAW CLAIMS THE LAW DOES.
This law:
Does NOT allow a student’s name or gender identity to be changed on an official school record without parental consent.
Does NOT limit a student’s ability to discuss their gender identity with their own family.
Does NOT take away or undermine parents’ rights.
AB 1955 does not prevent families from having these conversations.
Does NOT allow teachers & school districts to hide information from parents.
Actually, the law DOES undermine parents' rights, if one believes that parents have the right to demand that the school tell them if their child is living as a different sex at school from the sex on the child's birth certificate. Otherwise, these statements are true – and only tangentially relevant to the main issue regarding parental notification requirements. Again, this is mainly Newsom defending the law by arguing against complaints that no one has levelled at the law — while ignoring the real issues that critics of the law have raised. Basically, Newson’s defense involves little more than an attempt to deflect attention from the real purpose of this teacher protection law. But that’s politics I guess, even if it’s children and their families who ultimately pay the price
In summary
This is a classic example of a “through the looking glass” law – a law that actually does the opposite of what proponents claim it does. Supporters claim it’s a student safety law that promotes family unity and understanding – when in fact it’s a law that will harm students and that violates parental rights, while protecting teachers. A terrible, horrible, no good, very bad, law.
No wonder people don’t think Newsom would make a winning presidential candidate (if Biden stepped down). He’s too far left.