Andrea Weber will never forget the week her daughter came out as transgender.

Initially, she had a lot of learning to do. She joined parent support groups to do everything she could in order to be there for her daughter. She felt clueless, but at the same time, she knew if she put in the effort, everything in her family would be okay.

But there wasn’t much Weber could do about other people around her.

“The week that Chloe came out to me, I went to the gym, and I was just in there lifting weights and I see like this group of men come in with MAGA hats on,” Weber said. “And I just started crying because I'm like, ‘These people hate my kid for no reason.’”

Weber lives in Orange County, California and has two children in the Orange Unified School District, which recently passed a parental notification policy for transgender students. The policy requires schools to inform parents if their child chooses to go by pronouns that differ from their biological sex or identify as transgender.

“Without having any understanding of what it means to have a trans kid or what it means to be transgender are people making these policies that are going to destroy these people's lives,” Weber said.

“They're saying they're worried about suicide,” she continued. “You are going to be causing more suicides by outing these kids before they're ready and outing these kids before they can feel safe in their home environment or knowing who’s safe for them to come out to.”

Orange Unified is just one of eight school districts across California that have passed a parental notification policy over the past few months. Other such policies have been implemented in school districts in New Jersey, Virginia, Texas and Florida. While activists claim these are targeted attacks against the LGBTQ+ community, supporters of these policies champion them as a win for parental rights.

A line drawn between schools and parents

Nicolas Pardue, who voted for the policy in the Murrieta Valley Unified School District, said his district has seen a divide between parents and “activist” teachers.

“I think the disturbing part about this has been it's helped create a gap between teachers and parents, and passing this was meant to go toward trying to close that gap,” Pardue said. “As a school board member, we represent parents, so trying to protect parental rights is of course part of what we're called to do — and making sure that the school continues to work in partnership with parents and educating our students.”

In California, school boards have passed a notification policy in eight school districts, with Orange Unified being one of the latest ones to adopt the change on Sept. 7. The first was Chino Valley Unified School District in July.

In August, California Attorney General Rob Bonta opened a civil rights investigation against Chino Valley and filed a lawsuit, claiming the policy discriminated against transgender students and put them in harm’s way.

In September, a San Bernardino Superior Court judge ruled in favor of a temporary injunction against the Chino Valley School Board, which effectively prevents the district from enforcing the policy until the court case is resolved.

But Jonathan Zachreson, co-founder of Students First California, said the issue revolves around trust between schools and parents.

“There are these activists on the left that are breaking trust and going into the education system and pushing their activism in the classroom,” Zachreson said. “The fear is that you have activists at school districts trying to socially transition kids that aren't even trans and keep it secret from parents as long as possible. So you send your son to school, and then he comes home a girl in three months, and as a parent, you’re completely oblivious that anything has happened.”

Students First California is a nonprofit that's working to get three initiatives on the fall 2024 ballot: state-wide parental notification when students wish to alter their gender identity, restrictions for girls’ locker rooms, bathrooms and sports teams to only include students assigned female birth and an end to surgery and hormone therapy for transgender minors.

Harmful or helpful?

School board members who supported these policies think they’re necessary to protect students and uphold parents’ rights.

Jackie LaBarbera, who proposed a notification policy that passed in Shasta County’s Anderson Union High School District in August, said that characterizing the change as an “outing policy” puts students in danger and unnecessarily makes them afraid of opening up to teachers.

“The policy is not a tattletale policy,” LaBarbera said. “The policy is if a child tells a teacher they want to change their name, they want to get a different ID, they want to use a different bathroom — it's a policy saying before we intervene as a school, before we take official action as a school, we will notify parents.”

Andrea Valeria Diaz Tolivia, a journalism graduate student at Columbia University and transgender woman, said the policies breach trust between students and schools and put LGBTQ+ youth at risk.

“I came out in college, but when I was in high school, I still knew about it,” Diaz Tolivia said. “I wanted to come out. And it's really interesting because in my scenario, I went to talk to one of the therapists and they had no set plan on how to do this. It just scared me, and it made me not want to come out for another couple years.”

Research released earlier this year by KFF — formerly known as The Kaiser Family Foundation — and The Washington Post found that one in four transgender adults reported being physically attacked because of their identity.

The survey of 515 transgender people also found that trans children who had a trusted adult were less likely to report certain adverse childhood experiences.

For example, 67% of trans adults who reported having a trusted adult to talk to said they had a happy childhood. On the other hand, 44% of trans adults who didn’t have a trusted adult growing up said they had a happy childhood.

Almost 30% of participants said they were kicked out of their homes growing up.

“We don't want your cis kid to be trans. We want your trans kid to survive,” Diaz Tolivia said. “We don't want to trans anybody's kid. We just want the trans kids that are trans to make it and be happy.”

The debate extends from coast to coast

More school boards across the U.S. are also passing policies regarding trans youth. Some supporters see the debate going all the way to the Supreme Court.

In Virginia, the state Department of Education released model policies in July that require teachers to use a student’s legal name and the pronouns associated with their biological sex, unless a parent says it's okay. It specifies that schools should defer to parents to make the best decisions regarding their children's pronouns or decisions to socially transition.

School districts don’t have to adopt the model policies. Some have already claimed they won’t, while others — like Spotsylvania County Public Schools and the Virginia Beach School Board — already have.

In Florida, children in the Orange County School District cannot go by a nickname that deviates in any way from their legal name unless they submit a signed parental permission form. As an example, it specifies that a child named “Robert” cannot go by the name “Rob” unless a parent submits a form authorizing teachers to use the nickname.

In New Jersey, Attorney General Matt Platkin sued three school districts after they passed parental notification policies. School boards in Texas are also passing similar actions.

“It gets very emotional. It feels like a lot of outsiders are coming in and trying to push their will, and I think it’s because trans people make other people feel uncomfortable,” Weber said. “They don’t understand it, they can’t relate to it, and so it has to be eradicated.”

Zachreson said parental notification policies need to be passed statewide in his home state of California.

“Even if you get a couple dozen school districts to pass a notification policy, you're still left with nearly a thousand school districts in California that have a secrecy policy,” Zachreson said. “That's why it's important to get this state law to make sure parents are informed and we have integrity and trust in the education system.”

He pointed to high suicide rates in the trans community and argued getting parents involved will help vulnerable students more than anything else.

“Bonta says that nearly 80% of kids who identify as a different gender have suicidal ideation,” Zachreson said. “It is irresponsible if you have that kind of information — four in five chance — that a kid could harm themselves. And you’re not going to notify the parents?”

Kristi Hirst is co-founder of Our Schools USA, a nonprofit dedicated to quality public education. She said these policies are exacerbating an already difficult time with ongoing teacher shortages nationwide and they have the power to affect national politics.

“They're starting at school boards, and you're watching these school boards break laws on purpose to get court cases to make it to SCOTUS,” Hirst said. “When it gets to SCOTUS, it doesn't matter if you live in L.A. or San Francisco or New York City — you'll be impacted by these new laws no matter where you live.”

Student privacy vs. parental rights

Most school districts have a nondiscrimination and harassment clause in their education code that protects students from prejudice based on race, disability, religion, sexual orientation and gender. That often includes gender identity, gender expression and transgender status.

But does this protection overrule a parent’s right to be informed about their child’s identity?

In the Escondido Union School District in San Diego County, a federal judge temporarily blocked the district from enforcing a policy that works to encourage privacy for transgender students.

The district’s policy forced school staff to keep students’ transgender identity private — including to their parents — unless the student gave written consent or if disclosure was necessary to protect the student’s safety.

U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez said the policy was “a trifecta of harm.”

“It harms the child who needs parental guidance and possibly mental health intervention to determine if the incongruence is organic or whether it is the result of bullying, peer pressure, or a fleeting impulse,” Benitez wrote in his ruling. “It harms the parents by depriving them of the long recognized Fourteenth Amendment right to care, guide, and make health care decisions for their children.”

He continued: "And finally, it harms plaintiffs who are compelled to violate the parent’s rights by forcing plaintiffs to conceal information they feel is critical for the welfare of their students — violating plaintiffs’ religious beliefs."

Hirst is also a parent and former teacher in the Chino Valley Unified School District. She said teachers are already doing everything they can to keep parents informed and involved in their children’s education.

“No teachers or schools are actively trying to block out parents,” Hirst said. “In fact, they actively work constantly trying to access ways to bring parents in. I’ve spent as a teacher countless hours — and as a parent — trying to get more parents involved. So to see this all being sold under the guise of ‘They want to shut parents out.’ That’s a lie.”

LaBarbera pointed to Benitez’s ruling as further evidence of the importance of parental notification.

“You have all these cases all over California of children being secretly transitioned behind the parents' backs, and then there are claims to be made,” LaBarbera said. “I believe that we're in greater danger liability wise by keeping the policies the way that was keeping secrets. I don't see the policy going anywhere.”