U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez ordered California to pay $4.52 million in attorney's fees to the victorious plaintiffs who challenged California's so-called gender secrecy policies that hide students' gender identity from their parents and force teachers to withhold that information.

Tuesday's order blames California's "litigation intransigence" for the staggering sum. 

Early in litigation, after Benitez denied their motion to dismiss, Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond and Board of Education tried to "sidestep the effect" of his orders by asking for judgment on the pleadings, then filed new motions to dismiss and for judgment on the pleadings after the plaintiffs amended their complaint, the judge wrote.

It was deja vu all over again when the plaintiffs sought to certify a class action, with Attorney General Rob Bonta moving to dismiss, and Thurmond filed another motion to dismiss a week after Benitez denied motions to dismiss, the order says. 

Benitez blasted the California defendants for filing an appeal of his permanent injunction just a day after after asking him to stay the injunction in late December, "effectively wasting scarce judicial resources during a statewide winter break from public education, the necessity of which remains unexplained." He noted they twice "formally withdrew arguments after they were shown to be inarguably meritless."

The judge found all the time spent by the plaintiffs' lawyers on the case, excluding their work on "strategic" friend-of-the-court briefs in other cases, to be "reasonably incurred."

He awarded the Thomas More Society, representing the plaintiffs. the 1.25 "multiplier" they sought for attorney's fees. 

"State public education policies impinged on families’ right to the free exercise of religion under the First Amendment," and "rejected and subverted the federal constitutional rights of California parents to guide the health and well-being of their school-age children," and the plaintiffs got "impressive results through three years of dogged litigation," Benitez wrote.

"To this day, the Defendants continue to fight about the merits based on the thinnest of arguments," he said, noting California went over his head to try to get the permanent injunction amended, an effort rejected by a federal appeals court after the Supreme Court upheld the injunction.

The Thomas More Society explained the significance of the multiplier Benitez approved, "a rare enhancement reserved for cases of exceptional importance and outstanding results. The Court found every factor justified the multiplier: the constitutional significance of the case, the results achieved, the undesirability of the case, and the likelihood that no other attorney would have accepted it."

The attorney's fee award "sends an unmistakable message to state governments and school districts across the country: if you trample the constitutional rights of parents, you will pay for it—literally,” Executive Vice President Peter Breen said. 

“California threw everything it had at this case," he said. "It lost at summary judgment, lost at the Supreme Court, and now Californians will foot the bill for their government officials’ refusal to respect the fundamental rights of families.”