The LGBTQ+ community rallies in solidarity, opposing the Social Studies Alive! ban in Temecula Valley Unified in June 2023.
Credit: Mallika Seshadri / EdSource
California Attorney General Rob Bonta is formally backing a motion to prevent the Temecula Valley Unified School District from implementing policies that could censor instruction about race and gender as well as those that force employees to notify parents if their child shows signs of being transgender.
In August, Public Counsel, the nation’s largest pro bono law firm, and Ballard Spahr LLP, filed a case against Temecula Valley Unified School District on behalf of its parents, teachers, the teachers union and students. A hearing on the motion for a preliminary injunction to block the board from enforcing its policies as the case moves forward will take place on Jan. 24.
Bonta’s brief, in support of the plaintiffs, marks the first time in recent history that the state has intervened in litigation to curb ideological censorship in the classroom, according to Public Counsel’s Opportunity Under Law project supervising attorney Amanda Mangaser Savage.
“The state is recognizing that this case will be a bellwether for courts across the state and for, frankly, states across the nation in terms of what school boards can and cannot do in classrooms,” Mangaser Savage said.
“It is abundantly clear under the law that school boards can’t restrict students’ access to ideas on an ideological basis, but that is precisely what is happening.”
The lawsuit comes after the Temecula Valley Unified School District school board’s conservative majority — elected in November 2022 — banned critical race theory, temporarily took the social studies curriculum Social Studies Alive! off the shelves due to a mention of LGBTQ+ rights activist Harvey Milk in the supplemental material, fired former Superintendent Jodi McClay and passed a policy that would require school officials to notify parents if their child shows a sign of being transgender.
Temecula Valley Unified’s school board has since received backlash from the community, which lodged a campaign to recall its three conservative board members — and submitted enough signatures to move forward in the recall process for board President Joseph Komrosky.
This isn’t the first time Bonta has opposed transgender notification policies percolating in about half a dozen California districts. He previously opened a civil rights investigation of the same policy implemented at the Chino Valley Unified School District and had called the measures approved by Temecula Valley Unified a “grave concern.”
“The attorney general’s participation just really highlights and emphasizes that illegality. It emphasizes the strength of the legal claims that the students have brought here,” Mangaser Savage said. “So it’s really heartening to see the attorney general participate in this and certainly aligns with what we understand to be his commitment to safe, inclusive, equitable schools.”
Bonta’s brief specifically states that “forced disclosure provisions” regarding transgender students “violate these students’ state constitutional right to equal protection and statutory protections from discrimination.”
It also states that the transgender notification policy infringes on student’ right to privacy and discriminates against transgender and gender-nonconforming “students for forced disclosure, and not their cisgender peers.” It further alleges that the policy is based on outdated social stereotypes that being transgender is a mental illness.
Bonta’s brief also alleges that board policies censor materials about race and gender and that censoring aspects of a curriculum has to be “reasonably related to legitimate educational concerns,” not based on religious or philosophical disagreements.
Censored materials, according to the brief, might include speeches written by Martin Luther King Jr., major court rulings, discussion of the U.S. government’s treatment of Native Americans, study of the women’s suffrage movement and police violence against Black Americans.
“These harms aren’t limited to Temecula, students and teachers, although they are certainly the most directly and most significantly impacted. But the threat here is to the entire system of public education in California,” Mangaser Savage said.
“When teachers are limited in teaching accurate history, when books are taken off of library shelves, when material that the state has determined is necessary for its students to learn to be meaningful participants in our democracy is being censored … that is deeply problematic and that poses a threat not just to Temecula students again, but to students across the state and to the health of our democracy as a whole.”