Attorney General Bonta Issues Legal Alert Warning School Districts Against Forced Outing Policies

OAKLAND — California Attorney General Rob Bonta today issued a legal alert addressed to all California county, school district, and charter school boards and superintendents, warning them against forced gender identity disclosure policies detrimental to the privacy, safety, and well-being of transgender and gender-nonconforming students. Forced disclosure policies require schools to inform parents whenever a student requests to use a name or pronoun different from that on their birth certificate or official records, even without the student’s permission or when doing so would put them at risk of physical, emotional, or psychological harm. Such policies also require notification if a student requests to use facilities or participates in programs that do not align with their sex on official records. In today’s alert, Attorney General Bonta reminds all school boards that these forced gender identity disclosure policies violate the California Constitution and state laws safeguarding students’ civil rights. Today’s announcement comes after Attorney General Bonta secured a ruling from the San Bernardino Superior Court preliminarily enjoining the Chino Valley Unified School District Board of Education’s mandatory gender identity disclosure policy in October 2023.

“Unconstitutional school policies that forcibly out and endanger the psychological and emotional well-being of transgender and gender-nonconforming students have no place in our classrooms,” said Attorney General Bonta. “Today’s alert serves as a reminder to all school officials of their duty to ensure a safe and inclusive learning environment, particularly for our most vulnerable student populations susceptible to violence and harassment. At the California Department of Justice, we will continue safeguarding the civil rights of all students.” 

In today’s alert, Attorney General Bonta stresses that forced gender identity disclosure policies infringe on several state protections safeguarding students’ civil and constitutional rights, including:

• California’s Equal Protection Clause: These policies unlawfully discriminate against and single out students who request to identify with or use names or pronouns different from those on their birth certificates, or who access programs or facilities that, in the view of the board, are not “aligned” with the student’s gender.
• California’s Education and Government Code: Education is a fundamental right in California, and California Education Code Sections 200 and 220 and Government Code section 11135 also ensure equal rights and opportunities for every student by prohibiting discrimination on the basis of gender identity and gender expression. Forced disclosure policies violate these fundamental anti-discrimination protections.
• California’s constitutional right to privacy: California’s constitution expressly protects the right to “privacy,” including both “informational privacy,” and “autonomy privacy,” and policies that mandates outing transgender and gender-nonconforming students against their wishes or without their consent violates that right.

The Attorney General has a substantial interest in protecting the legal rights, physical safety, and mental health of children in California schools, and in protecting them from trauma, harassment, bullying, and exposure to violence and threats of violence. Research shows that protecting a transgender student’s ability to make choices about how and when to inform others is critical to their well-being, as transgender students are exposed to high levels of harassment and mistreatment at school and in their communities when those environments are not supportive of their gender identity. 

• One-in-10 respondents in a 2015 national survey said that an immediate family member had been violent toward them because they were transgender, and 15% ran away from home or were kicked out of their home because they were transgender. Fewer than one-in-three transgender and gender nonbinary youth found their home to be gender-affirming.
• Nearly 46% of transgender students reported missing at least one day of school in the preceding month because they felt unsafe or uncomfortable there and 17% of transgender students reported that they left a K-12 school due to the severity of the harassment they experienced at school.
• Seventy-seven percent of students known or perceived as transgender reported negative experiences such as harassment and assault, and over half of transgender and nonbinary youth reported seriously considering suicide in the past year. 

A copy of the alert is available here.