California governor signs law prohibiting schools from informing parents about students changing pronouns

California Governor Gavin Newsom signed a law Monday prohibiting schools from informing parents when students change their pronouns in school. The Support Academic Futures and Educators for Today’s Youth (SAFETY) Act also imposes responsibilities on the State Department of Education to develop resources to “increase support for LGBTQ pupils.”

According to the California legislature’s LGBTQ caucus, the SAFETY Act is necessary to prevent school boards from outing the gender identity of students. In July 2023 several schools passed so-called “forced outing” policies, which required teachers to notify parents if their child identifies as transgender. The SAFETY Act bans that practice, standardizing the obligations of teachers across California. The bill enjoyed broad support from LGBTQ groups as well as the California Teachers Association, a large teachers union in the state.

Though the SAFETY Act enjoyed support in California’s legislature, it is not without its critics. The California Policy Center, a think tank generally critical of California’s Democratic government, suggested that the law amounts to an unfair infringement on parental rights. They claim that, “while it is certainly prudent to protect the privacy of a child from the public… children do not have a right to privacy that transcends their parents’ well-established rights.”

In response to this sort of worry, proponents of the law have argue that parental rights need not require teachers inform parents about their children. Instead, they write, a student’s gender identity “is generally a matter to be discussed between the child and their parents in the … manner chosen by the family.”