California continues to violate SCOTUS, Constitution with gender ideology laws 

The state of California will require at least one all-gender bathroom in every school district, county office of education and charter school with any combination of grades 1-12 beginning Wednesday, July 1.

The state’s bill requires the all-gender bathrooms to be “unlocked, unobstructed and easily accessible by any pupil,” with clear signage that it is open to all genders. Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the law in September 2023.

California is violating Supreme Court, Constitution

While Liberty Justice Center (LJC), a nonprofit legal firm, is not currently fighting this specific bill, the organization has warned the state of California about its gender-ideology practices that violate federal law. LJC sent a letter to California Attorney General Rob Bonta June 2 to inform him of the approximately 600 California school districts that conceal students’ gender social transitions from parents, in outright violation of federal law and the U.S. Constitution.

California Assembly Bill 1955 requires schools to hide gender transitions from parents, but this state law directly contradicts the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent judgment in Mirabelli v. Bonta. The Court returned the case to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and said the plaintiff parents are likely to succeed because of the violation of their religious freedom after a school hid the gender transition of their child from them, against their will.

“The parents who assert a free exercise claim have sincere religious beliefs about sex and gender, and they feel a religious obligation to raise their children in accordance with those beliefs. California’s policies violate those beliefs,” Associate Justice Elena Kagan writes in the per curiam opinion.

While California argues its laws protect “student safety and privacy,” the Court rebuts, saying such policies “cut out the primary protectors of children’s best interests: their parents.”

But California schools are not yet abiding by the Court’s decision, meaning these districts are violating the federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, as well as the First and 14th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, according to LJC’s press release.

“Federal law trumps state law, and so if parents have a federal constitutional right pursuant to the First and 14th Amendments to know information about their child’s well-being, and state law said that there’s been a conflict with that, it’s state law that has to give way. The federal Constitution is supreme,” LJC Senior Counsel Tim Snowball told The Lion in an interview.

New PARENTS Initiative

In step with its warning to Bonta, LJC launched the Parental Action and Rights Enforcement to Ensure Notice, Transparency and Safety (PARENTS) Initiative, which defends parental rights and holds schools and state governments accountable for violating these rights. The PARENTS Initiative encompasses three frequent areas of litigation: required notification to parents of events at school, school choice for families and parental and student free speech.

“What we rely upon is brave parents being able to stand up, who have a problem with the kind of stuff going on and to let us know that they’re interested in being plaintiffs,” Snowball said, adding that LJC represents clients free of charge, thanks to generous donor funding.

One of many parental rights cases in California

Recently, parents sued California’s Sunnyvale School District for failing to notify them of a gender-ideology lesson involving books on sexuality and gender identity that conflict with their faith, according to a press release from the Becket Fund. While LJC is not involved in this specific case, confronting such circumstances requires brave parents who are willing to publicly oppose these unlawful actions, Snowball explained.

“We help people protect their constitutional rights, but in a lot of these cases, it takes a brave family standing up and saying no, that they’re not going to comply with this, and once we know those folks are willing to fight it, then we step in and we supply them with the backup to fight these kinds of things,” he continued.

America’s slow judicial system, as designed

The U.S. judicial system requires individual cases involving real controversies, Snowball explained. Courts, even the U.S. Supreme Court, can’t issue “advisory opinions,” in which justices intervene or comment on state affairs without a legal case. Only when plaintiffs are suffering harm do they have standing to sue and can bring their case before a court, Snowball explained.

“While that does slow a lot of things down, unfortunately, it also could be a benefit because we won’t have the law changing every other week based on the political whims of individual justices,” Snowball said, adding that some Americans want to change the structure of the Supreme Court to create a “council of elders passing their own opinions” on various circumstances.

“That’s not the way that our system is designed,” he said.

Instead of England’s advisory opinion model, the U.S. Constitution established the judicial process to be slow to provide stability for the country, he explained.

“Part of the genius of the Founders is that’s how they designed it,” Snowball said. “We’re celebrating our 250th anniversary and that’s part of the reason why our Constitution has been the longest running, the most copied, and the greatest celebrated in the history of the world: because a lot of these checks and balances work.”