SAN DIEGO (FOX 5/KUSI) — The two teachers who sued an Escondido school district over a gender privacy policy have expanded their challenge to California leaders, setting up a wider legal battle over when teachers should inform the parents of transgender students about their identities.
California Governor Gavin Newsom and Attorney General Rob Bonta were added as defendants in the federal lawsuit in a 76-page amended complaint filed by Rincon Middle School teachers, Elizabeth Mirabelli and Lori Ann West, with the court on Monday.
“(The) previously named defendants are all operating under the supervision and control of the Governor, who has ultimate responsibility for overseeing the state’s education system,” Paul Jonna, the teachers’ attorney, said on Thursday. ” …because the California AG and the Governor are so connected to this fight, we’re naming them as defendants to hold them fully accountable as well.”
The new filing builds off their initial claim that an Escondido Union School District policy requiring teachers to get a transgender students’ consent to disclose their identity to parents was a violation of their First Amendment rights.
The policy also required teachers to refer to students by their preferred names and pronouns at school, the suit says, reverting to biological pronouns and legal names when speaking with the students’ parents if the student did not give consent for them to disclose that information.
District officials said the policy was put in place to protect transgender students who may not yet be comfortable with coming out to their parents due to risks to their safety at home. Research has shown a majority LGBTQ+ youth do not live in homes they view as supportive of their identity.
The policy echoes recommendations from the California Department of Education for how schools should approach its gender-based policies to accommodate transgender and gender nonconforming students for better academic outcomes while protecting their right to privacy.
In their lawsuit, however, the teachers argued EUSD’s policy forces them to lie to parents about issues that relate to their children’s well-being, contradicting other existing policies. They also argued it is a violation of their right to freedom of expression and free exercise of religion.
In a September ruling, the federal judge hearing the case sided with the teachers in their request for a preliminary injunction, temporarily striking down the privacy policy. In the decision, he said parental involvement is “essential to the healthy maturation of schoolchildren” and that the policy places adverse harm on all parties.
Mirabelli and Ann West’s attorney says the decision is binding to “all of the applicable state actors.” State officials, who similar received a ruling in a separate suit blocking a school district’s policy mandating teachers disclose transgender students’ identities to parents, have disagreed.
” … the Mirabelli case addresses the limited question of whether the two plaintiff teachers have a right, allegedly based on their sincerely-held religious beliefs, to disclose a student’s transgender identity to a parent without the student’s consent under the First Amendment’s free exercise of religion clause,” Attorney General Bonta wrote in a September letter to schools.
In a follow-up letter last month, Bonta warned that school districts with what he calls “forced disclosure policies” are opening themselves up to legal liability from challenges brought for violations of privacy and non-discrimination laws for educational settings.
However, Mirabelli and Ann West contend these letters and other guidance cannot compel schools to implement policies like EUSD’s privacy policy.
The teachers are asking the court to resolve the legal uncertainty between the conflicting understanding of how schools are supposed to handle issues of privacy as it relates to transgender students under both state and federal law.
FOX 5 has reached out to the offices of Newsom and Bonta and is awaiting response.