A New Jersey judge on Friday temporarily blocked three school districts from enforcing policies that alert parents if their child is transitioning genders.
Democratic New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin sued the Middletown Township, Marlboro Township and Manalapan-Englishtown Regional boards of education in June after the governing bodies voted to adopt policies that would require educators to notify parents if their child wants to change their gender. New Jersey Superior Court Judge David F. Bauman granted a preliminary injunction against the school districts’ policies, prohibiting them from notifying parents of their child’s gender transitions, according to NJ.com. (RELATED: ‘Parental Rights Focus’: Mom Intervenes Against State’s Challenge Of Policy That Notifies Parents If Child Is Trans)
“The state has demonstrated a reasonable probability of success on its claim that the Amended Policies, if implemented, will have a disparate impact on transgender, gender nonconforming and nonbinary youth,” Bauman wrote in his opinion, according to NJ.com.
The state alleged in its lawsuit that the policies violate New Jersey’s Law Against Discrimination, which requires schools to not treat students differently based on their “gender identity and expression.” The state’s Department of Education’s Transgender Student Guidance mandates that school districts “accept a student’s asserted gender identity” and notes that “parental consent is not required” to allow the student to transition at school.
“As the Superior Court correctly recognized, the State is ‘not targeting parental rights,’” Platkin said in a press release. “Indeed, the State has never sought and never will seek a ‘ban’ on parental notification. All our lawsuits seek to do is to reinstate the same policies these districts found acceptable with little protest for years. Put simply, we can both keep parents informed about their children’s development and protect the civil rights of our most vulnerable students. Our laws require nothing less.”
School boards throughout the country are adopting similar policies to those of the New Jersey school board’s named in the lawsuit; in a 3-2 vote, the Murrieta Valley School Board in California enacted a policy on Aug. 10 that would notify parents if their child is transitioning genders. Democratic California Attorney General Rob Bonta opened an investigation into Chino Unified School District on Aug. 4 after the board voted to adopt a policy that requires educators to tell parents if their child has requested to change their gender at school.
“We are disappointed that the Court granted the State’s request for a preliminary injunction blocking our implementation of the amended policy until the matter is fully resolved at the New Jersey Division on Civil Rights – a process that could take years,” Marc Zitomer, the attorney for the Marlboro school board, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “In the meantime, the school district is now severely constrained in its ability to notify parents about important issues involving their minor children, which is quite concerning on many levels. We are exploring our avenues for appeal.”
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