(The Center Square) – A federal judge certified a class action lawsuit this week, representing all California parents and teachers affected by Parental Exclusion Policies on students’ gender identity, following a lawsuit by the Thomas More Society.<\/p>\n
U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez certified a class action lawsuit<\/a> on October 15. In the case Mirabelli v. Olson<\/a>, the Thomas More Society, a nonprofit law firm, is representing the plaintiffs in a federal lawsuit against the Escondido Union School District, the California Department of Education and California Attorney General Rob Bonta.\u00a0<\/p>\n The court order in Mirabelli v. Olson means the case will represent over 300,000 California public school teachers and the parents of more than 5 million California public school students.\u00a0<\/p>\n Judge Benitez wrote in the court order, \u201cInjunctive relief on behalf of the proposed class would achieve systemic changes to the California Department of Education that would obviate the need for future lawsuits seeking similar relief.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n On November 17, a summary judgment hearing could end California’s Parental Exclusion Policies statewide. The hearing will decide if Judge Benitez rules that these policies violate parents\u2019 First and Fourteenth Amendment rights to their children\u2019s upbringing and for teachers, their First Amendment rights to freedom of speech and religious expression.\u00a0<\/p>\n Under these policies, teachers and administrators are required to use preferred pronouns requested by a student and hide a child\u2019s gender identity from parents. They use biological pronouns and legal names only when speaking with parents, if the child requests parents be kept in the dark.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cJudge Benitez has recognized that California\u2019s gender secrecy policies affect millions of families and teachers, and that everyone impacted deserves to have the fundamental constitutional issues squarely resolved,\u201d said Paul Jonna, special counsel for Thomas More Society and a partner at LiMandri & Jonna LLP, in a press release. \u201cWith this class action certified, every affected parent and teacher in California now has a voice in court.\u201d<\/p>\n The suit began in April 2023 when two Escondido teachers, Elizabeth Mirabelli and Lori West, sued their school district in San Diego County and the CDE, after the district refused to grant them religious accommodation.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cParents have a fundamental right, recognized by the Supreme Court for over a century, to direct their children\u2019s educational and moral upbringing,\u201d said Peter Breen, executive vice president and head of litigation at Thomas More Society, in a press release. \u201cCalifornia\u2019s Department of Education and school districts cannot override that right by keeping parents in the dark about major issues and developments in their child\u2019s life.\u201d<\/p>\n The Center Square reached out to the CDE and AG Bonta for a comment on this court order, but has not received a response.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(The Center Square) – A federal judge certified a class action lawsuit this week, representing all California parents…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10459,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,9,8,9916,1014,9917,4294,719,1846,1016,9915,9914],"class_list":["post-10458","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news","tag-civil-rights-and-liberties","tag-class-action","tag-fourteenth-amendment-to-the-united-states-constitution","tag-gender-identity","tag-justice","tag-lawsuit","tag-lawsuits","tag-lgbtq-rights","tag-roger-benitez"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10458","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10458"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10458\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10459"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10458"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10458"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10458"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}