'Dead on arrival': Calif. 'parental exclusion' law said to violate court order, prompts Musk exit

California Gov. Gavin Newsom and his Democrat-run Legislature just lost two major employers by enacting a law that violates a court order, according to a mercurial billionaire and teachers suing the Golden State for muzzling them.

Elon Musk said he's moving headquarters for SpaceX to Texas from California due to Monday's signing of AB 1955, which claims "existing law" already requires school districts to hide students' gender identities at odds with sex from their parents. It takes effect Jan. 1.

This is "the final straw" for Musk following "many" other laws "attacking both families and companies," he wrote on his social media platform X.

"Strong move," transgender celebrity Caitlyn Jenner responded. "The state is not the parent!"

Musk then said he's also moving X headquarters to Texas, though it wasn't clear if the new law was his reason. "Have had enough of dodging gangs of violent drug addicts just to get in and out of the building," Musk wrote, referring to X headquarters in San Francisco.

Strong move.

The state is not the parent!

Parental Rights > https://t.co/ipKFcWj7sN

— Caitlyn Jenner (@Caitlyn_Jenner) July 16, 2024

Gender-ideology critic and author Wesley Yang scolded Musk for not putting his money behind a ballot measure that would have preempted the law but failed to collect enough signatures this spring.

Thomas More Society lawyers for the teachers suing California said the new law violates an injunction they obtained last fall against Escondido Union School District (EUSD) and state defendants for a district-level policy similar to the new law. 

They notified U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez on Monday of the "new authority" in support of their motion to file an amended complaint seeking "class-wide injunctive relief and summary judgment," which they argued before him last week, special counsel Paul Jonna said in a statement given to Just the News on Tuesday that called the law "dead on arrival."

The amended complaint adds new plaintiffs and "directly challenges" the "blatantly unconstitutional" law, which lawmakers justified under "state privacy rights" superseded by the U.S. Constitution, Jonna said. "Schools can’t force teachers to withhold that information from parents; and school districts absolutely have the right to pass parental notification policies."

The Liberty Justice Center filed a lawsuit Tuesday on behalf of the Chino Valley Unified School District and parents of students to stop the new law, which would keep parents in the dark "when their [gender-confused] children may be at increased risk of psychological, emotional, and physical harassment and abuse, and extremely high rates of suicide and suicide attempts."

It calls social transition, in which the school recognizes a student as the opposite sex in name, pronouns and usage of intimate facilities, "an impactful psychotherapeutic intervention" that "may or may not be the best therapeutic approach for any specific child."

The law violates the 14th Amendment "substantive due process" rights of parents by implicating "medical issues that require the parents’ care and attention," their First Amendment free-exercise rights as "devout Christians" because it's "not generally applicable due to comparable exemptions," and the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act by withholding records of their children, the suit says.

The Constitution preempts the law as applied to the Chino Valley district, the plaintiffs argue, seeking an injunction against the law's enforcement or at least an affirmation that Chino Valley's notification policy "does not violate AB 1955."

Unlike the Thomas More Society's new plaintiffs, the Liberty Justice Center names all of its plaintiffs in the new suit.

Both accuse the state of ignoring World Professional Association of Transgender Health guidelines, which recommend involving parents in gender-confusion assessment in "almost all situations," especially because they can provide "critical context" when a child suddenly identifies as the opposite sex and any relevant "excessive peer and social media influence."

California AG Bonta filed this brief yesterday. Its argument boils down to "we have to medicalize gender confused kids because WPATH says so." https://t.co/kr2nXM4cO6 pic.twitter.com/M9oVgJAFls

— Laura Powell (@LauraPowellEsq) March 14, 2024

AB 1955 portrays itself as "declaratory," adding new sections to the Education Code to specify what the law already requires. It overwhelmingly passed the Assembly and Senate.

Employees or contractors "shall not be required to disclose any information related to a pupil’s sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression" without the student's consent, and districts, boards and even charter schools "shall not enact or enforce any policy, rule, or administrative regulation" requiring such disclosure, it says. 

Newsom signed the law, which sets no age minimum for withholding information, the same day Pacific Legal Foundation lawyers for a California student's mother asked the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn a ruling that stripped "young" elementary school students of First Amendment rights.

A district judge upheld a school's right to punish a Viejo Elementary School first-grader for giving a black classmate a drawing that read "Black Lives Mater [sic]" because it also read "Any Lives," which Principal Jesus Becerra called "racist" and "inappropriate" despite admitting the drawing was "innocent." 

Becerra forced the first-grader to apologize to the classmate and banned her from "drawing and giving pictures to classmates," and her teachers banned her from recess for two weeks – punishment her parents only learned of a year later, the appeal says.

An Orange County elementary school decided to teach 1st graders about BLM and then punished a student for innocently giving a picture that included the phrase "any life" to a classmate of color. That violates the 1st Amendment. https://t.co/wXIunMU9kl

— Caleb Trotter (@nolatarian) July 16, 2024

The Thomas More Society's amended complaint against the "parental exclusion policy," now awaiting Benitez's approval, is more than three times longer than its original complaint, not including nearly 300 pages of exhibits.

The new plaintiffs are two middle-school teachers "who object on both religious and moral grounds" to the policy, two sets of parents with "a gender incongruent middle-school child who was socially transitioned at school without their knowledge," and the Lakeside Union School District, which is "considering passing a Parental Notification Policy" the law would forbid.

The state sued Chino Valley and the Rocklin Unified School District for not respecting the "autonomy privacy and information privacy rights with respect to their gender identity," claiming this is required by the California Constitution's privacy clause, the amended complaint says.

Because 10 other districts bucked the state and "nearly 20" are considering doing so, and a California Superior Court rejected its privacy argument in litigation against Temecula Unified, the Legislature passed the "gut-and-amend" AB 1955, it says.

Benitez's injunction against EUSD and state defendants didn't dissuade "several California Deputy Attorneys General" from directly threatening EUSD if it protected teachers or parents other than original plaintiffs Elizabeth Mirabelli and Lori Ann West, while Attorney General Rob Bonta twice told districts to "not follow the reasoning of this Court’s order," the complaint says.

The California Department of Education sued another district for not complying with its guidance, while EUSD put West on "involuntary administrative leave while it investigated patently frivolous complaints against her," the complaint says.

West has now filed an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission complaint against the district, while the decision of CDE and Bonta to reveal themselves as "the true source of EUSD's policy" led the Thomas More Society to seek "class-wide declaratory and injunctive relief against them."