After his parental-rights bill stalled, Bill Essayli developed a model policy that’s been adopted by six local school boards.
Blocked by united Democratic opposition in Sacramento, California assemblyman Bill Essayli took his battle to protect parental rights to the local level, where he hoped common sense would prevail over partisanship.
The freshman assemblyman’s trust in the wisdom of local governance is paying off: Six school districts in the state now require that schools notify parents when their children are experiencing gender confusion.
“The Democrat Party, especially up here in Sacramento, has been hijacked by the most progressive, leftist extremists on the political spectrum. They are a doubling down and tripling down on this issue that parents do not have a right to know,” Essayli told National Review. “They don’t want to talk about the real issue here. What’s the real issue? The real issue is who gets to raise children: Is it parents or is it the government?”
Essayli introduced the state’s first parental-notification policy this year. When he campaigned in 2022, several court cases in which parents sued schools for supporting a child’s gender transition without parental knowledge or consent were on his radar.
“That really piqued my interest, because it didn’t seem right. So after I got elected, we looked more into it,” he said. “The only thing we could find was guidance in the form of a frequently asked questions section on the California Department of Education website, which suggested that minors have a right to privacy in the Constitution, and accordingly, that they may have a privacy interest in keeping this information secret from parents, and as a result, schools should not disclose this. Well, that’s not founded in any case law. So that’s why I decided to introduce legislation to force this issue into daylight.”
Essayli’s initial resolution, Assembly Bill 1314, required schools to notify parents if children were engaged in gender-support plans, which are implemented when students ask to change their gender identity or pronouns, experience gender confusion, or ask to use bathrooms and locker rooms that don’t match their sex. The bill quickly became a focal point for state Democrats, who railed against the parental-notification policy as “dangerous.”
“They refused to even provide a hearing for it in a committee — they wouldn’t even hear the bill,” Essayli said. “That’s when we shifted our focus and we said, ‘The Democrats outnumber us in Sacramento, and they’re not going to let us move [this bill] here. Why don’t we just model a local school-board policy and offer it up to school boards, to pass at a local level?’”
Essayli created California Parental Rights in June, which published a model school-board policy. With several involved parental organizations and multiple constitutional lawyers, the coalition provides guidance and support to parents and school-board members throughout the state.
It’s been an effective venture, so far.
Chino Valley Unified School District in Southern California was the state’s first district to implement a policy that requires schools to inform parents of a student’s gender-transition requests. As of last week, California’s Orange Unified School District was the state’s sixth district to adopt a parental-notification policy. Already, Murietta Valley Unified School District, Temecula Valley Unified School District, Anderson Union High School District, and the Rocklin Unified School District have passed similar policies.
Although California is a deep-blue state, Essayli said his Democrat constituents support parental-notification policies. A clear majority of voters (84 percent) support laws that require parents to be notified of changes in a child’s physical, mental, or emotional health, according to a Rasmussen poll. Californians are even 62 percent more likely to support such a law if it includes notifying parents of a child’s gender confusion.
“This is a big issue,” Essayli said. “And it’s one that transcends politics, cultures, religion — it transcends everything.”
Still, the state’s Democratic politicians are rallying together to strike down school boards’ proposals. Attorney general Rob Bonta, who is considering a 2024 gubernatorial run, announced a lawsuit against Chino Valley’s policy last month and a district judge temporarily blocked the policy last week.
Bonta said that Chino Valley’s policy puts children in danger, adding that he would “go to court to protect these young people.” But the district’s policy already includes a prohibition that protects children from potential harm: “No student should be referred home, no parental notification should be made, if there is a reasonable suspicion that child abuse or child neglect could take place as a result,” Chino Valley’s attorney noted at a board meeting.
Each school board can adopt nuanced differences in their policies. That allows boards to have a “deliberative process and [reflect on] the values of their community,” Essayli said. Rhetoric that suggests parental involvement endangers transgender students is over-the-top and reckless, he added.
“If you look into [Democrats’] philosophy, they believe the government knows what’s best, and that you are either too dumb or you think wrong, and therefore, the government needs to substitute parental judgment with their judgment,” he said. “That’s what this whole thing is about. They want to raise the kids the way they think — and parents are getting in the way of that.”
Governor Gavin Newsom has remained relatively quiet on the issue. Newsom did, however, say in August that no other state in America comes close to supporting “local control” and “parental engagement” like California.
“In California, parents have the right to actively participate in their child’s learning, and we’re transforming education so all students can learn on a safe campus where they can receive quality education, healthy meals, mental health care, and have the freedom to learn without political censorship,” Newsom said.
Democrats may soon pass legislation requiring California judges to consider a parent’s affirmation of their child’s gender identity in custody cases. Such gender affirmation includes letting children play with gender-specific toys or letting a child paint their nails. If the bill passes the state assembly, Newsom would have to sign it into law.
Parents at Orange Unified’s school board meeting last week said they felt threatened by state Democrats like Newsom, who want to conceal childrens’ lives from parents.
“We do not co-parent with the government. I am not a surrogate mother of the state,” local mother Rose Otero said. “God gave me these god-given rights to birth my child and to take care of her, so the state must not try to take those [rights] away.”
Timothy Johnson, a member of a local parent organization, praised Orange Unified’s board for standing up to state leadership.
“The people of the community are going to remember your courage — the courage to stand against Bonta, and his cronies, Newsom and Thurmond,” Johnson said. “God made male and female. Each person is created in His image. What baffles me is why do teachers care so much about a child’s sexuality, and why do they want to hide that from the parent?”
With bipartisan community support, the parental-rights movement is growing, Essayli said. California Republicans are “terrified” to engage in social issues, but parental rights is the “issue of our moment.”
Essayli predicts that if Republicans continue to take a firm stand, they’ll benefit at the ballot box.
“This will be an issue on the ballot in 2024 — because school boards that don’t support parental rights, I think, will be vulnerable. And same thing for elected officials in Sacramento,” Essayli said. “I think Democrats are are walking into a buzzsaw on this issue, and I encourage them to keep going forward. When the Attorney General files a lawsuit and says in open court that parents are too dangerous to know what’s going on with their own kids, I hope parents hear that loud and clear. And that they consider that when they cast their ballots.”