The state of California, under Attorney General Rob Bonta, filed a lawsuit Aug. 28 against Chino Valley Unified School District (CVUSD) over a parental rights policy passed in July.
The policy requires schools to notify the parents of any child who asks to be identified at school as a gender other than the student’s biological sex or gender listed on the student’s birth certificate or other official records. Three more California school districts—Murrieta Valley, Temecula Valley and Anderson Union—have since passed the same policy.
Bonta’s suit claims that the policy “has placed transgender and gender nonconforming students in danger of imminent, irreparable harm from the consequences of forced disclosures.”
Sonja Shaw, president of the Chino school board, responded: “Once again this is government overreach, and the political cartel of Bonta, [Gov. Gavin] Newsom and [State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony] Thurmond is using their muscle and taxpayers’ dollars to shut parents out of their children’s lives. Bonta can’t even cite a law we are breaking in the documents, and I find it a joke.”
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Jonathan Keller, president of the California Family Council, also blasted the lawsuit, calling it “a disturbing departure from the state’s traditional role of supporting parents as the primary decisionmakers in their children’s lives. It appears the government is stepping in as the de facto parent, a move unsupported by legal precedent.”
One of the constitutional attorneys defending the school district’s policy is Dean Broyles, president of the National Center for Law and Policy. He said Bonta is about to be “schooled” in an expensive legal lesson of federalism.
“The right of parents to direct the care, education and upbringing of their children is a fundamental right of all Americans, safeguarded by the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment,” Broyles said. “[It] is recognized by more than 100 years of Supreme Court precedent. California Attorney General Rob Bonta continues to seek to crush local control of schools and trash parental rights by now resorting to the courts to coerce CVUSD to conform to his bent will.
“His transparent purpose is to slow down the growing number of school districts adopting the model parental notification policy. Why? Because he is apparently more concerned about woke ideology than sound constitutionality—or the actual health and safety of children. Overreaching Bonta apparently believes the absolutely insane notion that parents do not have the right to know what is happening with their child’s health and safety in our public schools.”
Decision Magazine, founded by Billy Graham in 1960, works through its website and monthly magazine to communicate the Gospel, as well as inform and challenge readers about key cultural and Biblical issues.
Editor’s Note: Why Is This News Biblically Relevant?
The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA), in their article, “Raising Children in a Godless Age,” wrote:
Many Christian parents are becoming fearful that they cannot properly train their children in this lawless and wicked age. We have received scores of letters in our office asking, “What is the answer? What can I do with my son? My daughter?”
We are beginning to reap what has been sown for the past generation. We have taught the philosophy of the devil, who says, “Do as you please.” Behaviorism has been the moral philosophy of much of our education in the past few years. Psychiatrists have told parents to let their children do as they please, lest in restraining them they may warp the children’s personalities.
We have taken God out of our educational systems and thought we could get away with it. We have sown the wind, and we are now reaping the whirlwind. We have laughed at God, religion and the Bible.
Many of our educational leaders sneer at the old-fashioned idea of God and a moral code.
Many parents do not realize that they are responsible for their children’s mental and spiritual growth and character building, as well as for feeding and clothing them. If parents fail, God is going to hold them responsible.
If you are a parent, Christ can help you to rear your children in the fear and nurture and admonition of the Lord. If I were not a Christian, I would despair of my children in the moral climate in which we have to rear them.
Most trouble with teenagers comes from children reared in homes where prayer is neglected, the Bible is never opened and church attendance is spasmodic. Christ gives the moral stability, understanding, wisdom and patience needed to rear children.
