-Federal Court: Christian Teachers Do Not Have to Lie to Parents

PARENTAL RIGHTS vs STATE

A federal Judge ruled that Teachers do not have to lie to parents and hide their children’s gender confusion. According to California’s Escondido Unified School District’s (USD) policy, teachers and staff are required not to tell parents about any gender changes their children might be seeking. Two Christian teachers contended that the district policy, to be dishonest with parents, violated their First Amendment rights; including free speech and their “sincerely held religious beliefs.” Here’s the story from CBN:

…Judge Benitez issued an injunction that only temporarily blocks the policy from being enacted, he wrote that the policy appears to undermine constitutional rights calling it a “trifecta of harm.”

     “It harms the child who needs parental guidance and possibly mental health intervention to determine if the incongruence is organic or whether it is the result of bullying, peer pressure, or a fleeting impulse,” Benitez explained. “It harms the parents by depriving them of the long-recognized Fourteenth Amendment right to care, guide, and make health care decisions for their children. And finally, it harms plaintiffs who are compelled to violate the parent’s rights by forcing plaintiffs to conceal information they feel is critical for the welfare of their students — violating plaintiffs’ religious beliefs.”

     He also noted the teachers “face an unlawful choice along the lines of: ‘lose your faith and keep your job, or keep your faith and lose your job.’”

     Benitez made it clear that school districts who insist that the child’s right to privacy is greater than the rights of parents are “mistaken” and the “Constitution neither mandates nor tolerates that kind of discrimination.”

Response: Several years ago, California passed a law that students in the state could choose for themselves whatever gender they wanted to be on any given day without parental guidance or notification. The Escondido District policy is in response to that law. It puts teachers in a position to lie or hide the truth from parents when it comes to the new gender ‘choices’ of their children. The policy also encourages students to keep their own gender ‘choices’ from their own parents creating an adversarial family environment and division. The policy puts the state government above parents; eclipsing parental rights in the raising of their own children.

Meanwhile six school districts in California are challenging that law with policies of their own requiring teachers to notify parents if their children change their gender identity.  Chino Valley Unified School District is one of those districts and California State Attorney General Rob Bonta sued the district in August to block the policy and was granted a temporary restraining order. We will be watching further legal developments in these cases.