State Launches Another Investigation Into IE School District

CHINO, CA — California Attorney General Rob Bonta announced Friday that his office is opening a civil rights investigation into "potential legal violations" by the Chino Valley Unified School District after its education board adopted a policy last month that forces campuses to “out” students who want to use a name or pronoun different from that on their birth certificate or official records.

It's the latest state battle with an Inland Empire school district over LGBTQ+ issues.

The Chino Valley USD's “parental notification policy” requires schools to inform parents, with minimal exceptions, whenever students request to use a different identity and/or use campus facilities or participate in programs that don't align with their sex on official records

Opponents of the district policy argue disclosure may be against some students' wishes and could expose them to parental abuse or increase their risk of self-harm or suicide.

"Chino Valley Unified’s forced outing policy threatens the safety and well-being of LGBTQ+ students vulnerable to harassment and potential abuse from peers and family members unaccepting of their gender identity," Bonta said Friday in a released statement. "California will not stand for violations of our students’ civil rights."

Bonta sent a July 20 letter to Superintendent Norman Enfield and the CVUSD board, emphasizing the "potential infringements" on students' civil and privacy rights and educational opportunities.

In his correspondence, the attorney general said, "Courts have recognized that gender identity is a protected privacy right under the California and U.S. Constitutions. Transgender identity is an 'excruciatingly private and intimate' detail about oneself and is thus protected by the right to privacy.

"Recognizing the significant harms that transgender students may suffer from being 'outed' to their parents against their will, the California Department of Education recommends that schools 'consult with a transgender student to determine who can or will be informed of the student’s transgender status, if anyone, including the student’s family,'" the letter continued. "The California Department of Education further instructs, 'schools are required to respect the limitations that a student places on the disclosure of their transgender status, including not sharing that information with the student’s parents,' subject to 'rare exceptions.'"

The California Department of Education guidelines recommend disclosure of a student’s status to parents only in “those very rare circumstances where a school believes there is a specific and compelling ‘need to know.’” The school must give the student advance notice before informing the parents, per the guidelines.

State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond attended the July 20 CVUSD board meeting in which the policy was adopted by members in a 4-1 vote. The California leader was escorted out of the meeting after speaking out against the policy and attempting to respond to criticism from board president Sonja Shaw.

Shaw emailed a personal statement in response to Bonta's Friday announcement. She called the attorney general's investigation "another intimidation factor and only shows their focus is to break up home[s] and families. They are making dangerous assumptions when they say parents are dangerous to their children. They are overstepping their boundaries. Parents don’t send their kids to school to develop secret relationships with adults.

"This is a ploy to try to scare all the other boards across California from adopting the policy," Shaw continued. "We have united all over California and people from all over the nation are linking up to protect our kids and ensure parental rights. They did us a favor and just revealed more of their agenda and exposed their intentions. I won’t back down and will stand in the gap to protect our kids from big government bullies."

CVUSD spokesperson Andi Johnston said district officials were emailed Friday's news announcement just prior to Bonta’s office releasing it. District officials were reviewing the state announcement, Johnston said.

The CVUSD is not the only Inland Empire school district to catch the state's ire. The Temecula Valley Unified School District's governing board is also in the state's crosshairs. Three of the five TVUSD trustees have adopted policies the state has characterized as "censorship," including a ban on any discussion of critical race theory and the removal of any elementary social sciences curriculum that contains references to LGBTQ rights.

Read more about the TVUSD's moves:

• Temecula Valley USD Sued By Teachers, Union, Parents, Students
• Critical Race Theory Banned In Temecula Schools By Newly Formed Board
• Amid Feud With Governor, Temecula Approves Social Studies Curriculum
• Temecula Valley USD In Legal Peril, Special Board Meeting Announced
• State Responds To TVUSD's Decision To Use Outdated Textbooks For Kids