Sometimes it can be hard to tell, especially if one lives in a place like California, that trendy social agendas do not trump the foundational rights of parents to protect and care for their children. Politicians may try to ignore such rights but thank goodness this country still has an independent judiciary to vindicate them.
Sara Randazzo reports for the Journal:
In San Diego County, a federal judge last week sided with two teachers who sued over their K-8 district’s practice of concealing gender-identity changes from parents at a student’s request.
U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez said the Escondido Union School District’s policy is unconstitutional and can’t be enforced against the two teachers, who argued it infringed on their religious beliefs.
Well done, Judge Benitez. Ms. Randazzo has more:Elizabeth Mirabelli, one of the teachers who sued, said that in her 25 years as a middle-school English teacher in the district she has always accepted her students for who they are, but she also knows that 11- and 12-year-olds are still developing and trying to push their independence.
She and physical-education teacher Lori Ann West, the other plaintiff, said they saw an uptick, mostly in girls requesting to be identified as boys once word of the new policy spread in 2022. Ahead of the 2022-23 school year, a school counselor sent out a list of six seventh-graders who should be referred to by new gender pronouns and names, but with instructions to use their birth names and genders when talking to parents.
“If we leave our parents out, those are the biggest champions of children,” Mirabelli said. She said she was compelled to contact the Thomas More Society, a Catholic legal organization, after speaking to the parents of one of her students who said they only learned about their child’s gender transition from female to male after it had been made on school records.