The 61-16 vote came after a lengthy and emotional back-and-forth between Democrats, who said the bill is necessary to protect LGBTQ+ youth, and Republicans, who said it would infringe on the student-parent relationship.

AB 1955 by Assemblymember Christopher M. Ward (D-San Diego) would shield teachers from retaliation for supporting transgender student rights and prohibit school policies that require “forced disclosure” of youth gender decisions to their families.

The legislation responds to a wave of conservative-backed school board policies that have sought to notify parents if their child changes their name or pronouns, or if students request to use facilities or participate in programs that don’t match their gender on official records.

Implementation of those policies are held up in court. But Democrats said Thursday that legislation is necessary to safeguard transgender K-12 students who may not feel safe at home to come out to their parents. They cited high bullying and suicide rates of transgender youth.

“It’s not the job of teachers to be the gender police. They want to teach, and they want to be able to provide a safe and supportive environment. And when they do, students will thrive,” a tearful Ward said on the Assembly floor, surrounded by his Democratic colleagues who stood in support of the bill. “Nothing in this bill gets involved in the parent-child relationship.”

The vote came after combative opposition from Assemblymember Bill Essayli (R-Corona), who opposed the measure over concerns about “parental rights” and accused Democrats of fear mongering.

Assembly Speaker Pro Tem Jim Wood (D-Healdsburg) repeatedly cut Essayli’s microphone during the debate and ruled that he was “out of order” for speaking about other legislation during his testimony against AB 1955, as well as for “disparaging the house.”

“I am tired of being interrupted by you,” Essayli told Wood.

Essayli, who compared state Democrats to the “Chinese Communist Party,” responded by attempting to block the testimony of his Democratic colleagues.

The floor debate was disrupted by several procedural votes required in order to cut Essayli’s time. The Democratic caucus ultimately paused the vote to take a recess after Assemblymember Corey Jackson (D-Perris) was physically restrained by his colleagues to stop him from confronting Essayli on the Assembly floor.

“I went blank. I lost it,” Jackson told The Times. “I don’t think sometimes that my Republican colleagues understand that for some bills, this is not about policy. This is about acknowledging people’s humanity. So of course it’s personal.”

Jackson said he apologized to his fellow lawmakers for the distraction and that he did not speak to Essayli about the matter.

“We stand with you. We do not want anyone to be bullied or hurt or erased or any of this stuff,” Essayli said after ultimately being allowed to speak on the floor about the bill. “When a child is going through this, it’s a very difficult and emotional time…. We do not believe that the government — the schools — have any authority to withhold information from parents at all, period.”

Several members of the California Legislative LGBTQ Caucus shared their own coming out stories in support of the bill and their experiences with unsupportive families.

Assemblymember Lori D. Wilson (D-Suisun City) said a teacher was the one to tell her that her child is transgender. She was “disappointed” by that teacher’s judgment.

“If my teacher had told my parents … I don’t know if I would’ve survived that day, because that was the level of abuse that was happening in my home,” Wilson said. “I don’t care how old you are. That is a personal decision.”

Newsom will have 12 days to sign or veto the bill, which cleared the Senate 29-8, once it officially hits his desk.

The Democratic governor is a staunch LGBTQ+ advocate. He signed a bill in 2022 that named California a sanctuary for transgender children and their families seeking healthcare and support they can’t get in red states.

But he shocked LGBTQ+ advocates when he vetoed a bill last year that would have required judges in custody battles to consider a parent’s support for their child’s gender identity. In a veto message, he said, “I urge caution when the executive and legislative branches of state government attempt to dictate — in prescriptive terms that single out one characteristic — legal standards for the judicial branch to apply.”

Newsom does not typically comment on pending legislation.

When asked about the issue last year, he told The Times that he understands parents’ concerns but said that the school board policies are being used as a guise by Republicans to “bully” the LGBTQ+ community.

The governor, a father of four, said he “draws the line” at requiring teachers to “out” students.

“I take very seriously the work I do as a parent at home to meet their needs, and I don’t honestly expect teachers to sub my role as a parent,” Newsom said in November. “I want them to teach my kids, and I want them to keep them safe and make them feel included and not outed.”

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A judge halted enforcement Tuesday of a new statewide rule requiring law enforcement officers to disclose their own gender identity in reporting traffic stops to a California anti-discrimination board.

As part of the state’s Racial and Identity Profiling Act, passed in 2015, California police officers are required to record information about people they stop and submit the data to the state, which compiles and analyzes the information in annual reports. Since Jan. 1, new regulations by Attorney General Rob Bonta’s office have required officers to also notify their employer whether they are cisgender, transgender or nonbinary, information the police agency relays to the state.

The temporary restraining order by Sacramento County Superior Court Judge Christopher Krueger came in a lawsuit by the Peace Officers’ Research Association of California, the California Association of Highway Patrolmen and organizations of police chiefs and sheriffs. Krueger did not spell out his reasons in the brief order, but scheduled a hearing for March 19 on a preliminary injunction that would keep the new requirements on hold while the case continued.

“PORAC remains committed to protecting the rights of all our members to live as they wish, identify as they see fit, and to share that identity on their own terms,” the organization’s president, Brian Marvel, said in a statement. PORAC says it has more than 78,000 members from 955 law enforcement organizations in the state. The group also opposed the initial law that created the data reporting requirements, and regularly criticizes annual reports showing officers disproportionately stop and search drivers of color.

David Mastagni, a lawyer for the police groups in the suit, said Bonta was contradicting the privacy standard the attorney general had declared for schools that require teachers to inform parents when a student identifies as transgender.

In a “Legal Alert” to school officials in California on Jan. 11, Bonta said that “forced gender identity disclosure policies — which target transgender and gender nonconforming students by mandating that school personnel disclose a student’s gender identity or gender nonconformity to a parent or guardian without the student’s express consent — violate state law.” He has taken that position in lawsuits against school districts in state and federal courts.

“Paradoxically, his DOJ (Department of Justice) refused to afford peace officers these same privacy rights,” Mastagni said. He said the rules also violate California’s civil rights law, the Fair Employment and Housing Act, which prohibits discrimination based on gender as well as race, ethnicity, age, religion and disability.

Bonta’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Under the attorney general’s rules, PORAC said, an officer’s gender identity would be disclosed on a form that could be accessed by supervisors and coworkers. Those who refused to disclose the information could be fired, and those who misstated their gender identity could lose their licenses, the organization said.

If enforced, PORAC said, the regulations would have the effect of “dissuading officers who are nonbinary or transgender from joining or remaining in the profession.”

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TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — Florida Republicans want to forbid discussions of sexual orientation or gender identity in schools with a bill that activists say endangers children and echoes a previous wave of laws that sought to squelch LGBTQ conversations in the classroom.

Activists have dubbed the proposal moving through Florida’s GOP-controlled Statehouse as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, and it has attracted condemnation on social media and from Chasten Buttigieg, the husband of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.

If passed, the measure would “effectively silence students from speaking about their LGBTQ family members, friends, neighbors and icons,” said Kara Gross of the Florida chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.

The bill emerged amid a national debate over how U.S. schools should teach about race, gender and history. The broad reexamination of public education has often turned contentious and led to books being pulled from school library shelves.

As written, the proposal states that school districts “may not encourage classroom discussion about sexual orientation or gender identity in primary grade levels or in a manner that is not age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students.” A parent could sue a district for violations.

In a committee hearing last week, Democrats peppered bill sponsor Rep. Joe Harding with questions about whether kids would be able to talk freely about LGBTQ people or history.

Harding repeatedly said his bill is meant to give parents more control over what their children learn. He maintained that it would not silence spontaneous discussions but instead stop a district from integrating such topics into the curriculum. He added that schools could still have lessons on Pride Month and events such as the 2016 Pulse nightclub massacre in which a gunman killed 49 people in Orlando.

“This doesn’t preclude discussion and conversation that’s going to happen. We’re talking about a school district initiating something through a standard procedure or policy that they’re doing,” he said.

Critics said Harding’s statements contradicted the broad text of his bill, particularly in terms of having lessons on LGBTQ history, which they argued would be barred from the curriculum. They also said the proposal does not specify what grades would be affected. Harding said it would apply to students in kindergarten through fifth grade.

“There’s a lack of clarity clearly on what this bill is seeking to do. But what we do know is that LGBTQ people are a normal, healthy part of our society,” Jon Harris Maurer, public policy director of Equality Florida, told lawmakers at the hearing. “We’re parents, students and teachers. We are your brothers and your sisters. Conversations about us aren’t something dangerous that should be banned.”

Aaron DiPietro, legislative director for the conservative Florida Family Policy Council, spoke in support of the measure, telling the committee: “These are issues that parents need to be involved in.”

The bill passed the GOP-controlled committee and now heads to another committee. After the hearing, state Rep. Carlos Guillermo Smith, a Democrat who is gay, posted a video to social media criticizing the proposal.

“We should and we are encouraging these types of conversations in our schools,” he said.

A similar bill introduced by a Republican state senator has yet to have a hearing.

The Florida proposal has echoes of a cluster of state laws passed mostly in the late 1980s and early 1990s to restrict discussions of LGBTQ issues in public schools.

In Utah, the restrictions banning “advocacy of homosexuality” in sex education and elsewhere affected kids for years, according to a 2017 lawsuit. They hamstrung one school’s response to bullying after a 7-year-old boy was beaten and burned on a hot metal slide because the laws prevented teachers from telling other kids it was OK to be gay or wear girls’ clothes, his mother said in court papers.

A school district also pulled a book about a lesbian couple raising children from library shelves under those rules.

In another case, a boy was told he could not do a family-history project on an uncle who was gay, said Clifford Rosky, a law professor at the University of Utah whose research formed the basis of the lawsuit.

“Any child or any student whose parent is a member of that group feels stigmatized, like the law stigmatizes their family,” he said. “We saw this very dramatically in Utah.”

Utah changed the law in response to the lawsuit, as have other states such as Arizona, South Carolina and Alabama.

Rosky said the Florida measure “has a greater discriminatory effect and a greater chilling effect, because it’s up to every individual parent to enforce the law,” he said.

The bill “would make teachers fearful of providing a safe, inclusive classroom,” said Julie Wilensky, senior staff attorney at the National Center for Lesbian Rights. “It would really harm LGBTQ students and families, and it would stigmatize them by suggesting there’s something so shameful or dangerous about LGBTQ people that they can’t be discussed at school.”

Large majorities of LGBTQ kids in Florida reported hearing homophobic remarks in school in a 2019 survey, and 69% reported being verbally harassed based on sexual orientation.

Last year, a handful of states passed new laws requiring parents to be notified about any discussions of LGBTQ issues in schools and allowing them to opt out. Those states included Tennessee, Arkansas and Montana, where the law has a broadly written in reference to “human sexuality education.” A similar measure was vetoed in Arizona.

It was part of a record year for anti-LGBT bills, with 26 enacted in 10 states, according to Human Rights Campaign. This year, less than a month into many legislative sessions, the LGBT-rights group is opposing at least 200 bills.

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WASHINGTON — The Department of Veterans Affairs began including gender identifiers in its national medical record system in December 2021 to help VA providers better understand and meet the health care needs of Veterans.

Providing this option demonstrates the agency’s commitment to delivering care fitting the individual needs of Veterans enrolled in VA health care, including transgender and gender-diverse Veterans.

VA added transgender male, transgender female, non-binary, other or does not wish to disclose options to its new gender identity field.

“Our goal is to align the department’s policies and procedures with the president’s vision for a more inclusive government,” said VA Secretary Denis McDonough. “All Veterans, all people, have a basic right to be identified as they define themselves. This is essential for their general well-being and overall health. Knowing the gender identity of transgender and gender diverse Veterans helps us better serve them.” 

A person’s gender identity conveys essential information about who they are and may signal experiences of stigma and discrimination that can affect their health. VA health records now display both gender identity and preferred name, so VA staff can address the Veteran appropriately.   

Further information can be found in VHA Directive 1341 or at LGBTQ+ Health Program.

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