AB 1955, which has no bipartisan support, is seen as an affront to parental rights; Sen. Min just helped it pass through the Senate.
State Senator Dave Min (CA SD-37) likes to describe himself as “a national leader on key progressive issues.” In truth, Sen. Min’s real penchant is not for leading, but for following. Time and time again, Sen. Min consistently aligns with the Democrat supermajority to advance their agenda at all costs, even when that requires him to support controversial legislation that isn’t popular outside of his own enclave of radical legislators and the groups that sustain them.
Such is the case with Assembly Bill 1955, which Sen. Min just helped push through the Senate. The “Support Academic Futures and Educators for Today’s Youth Act” is, despite its flowery title, little more than an effort to ban California schools from enacting parental notification policies.
Parental notification policies, many of which have already been enacted in school districts across the state, require school officials to inform parents and guardians when their children take certain affirmative steps to “socially transition” at school. They are designed to increase transparency and provide parents with the peace of mind in knowing that when their kids are dropped off at school, they are merely being educated—not guided through life-altering and irreparably harmful decisions.
Whether one supports the policies or not, it is the right of local school boards to determine whether they are right for the families they serve. That represents the biggest problem with AB 1955: it is a blanket, one-size-fits-all approach which strips local school boards of the authority to decide what policies are best for their communities.
Such a sweeping mandate from the state disregards the very principle of local governance.
“CA has invested 4.8 billion in finding teachers, going as far as creating 25 million in grants to change unqualified non-teaching staff into teachers. 350 million for residency programs and there’s still 10% vacancies. Why? Because teachers like me who love teaching refuse to hurt children by agreeing that a child can choose their sex and that their current body is a mistake that must be fixed,” said California teacher Jessica Wagner during a recent Senate Appropriations Committee meeting.
Some say Sen. Min ignored the voices of concerned parents and teachers with his decision to vote in lockstep with his Democrat colleagues to advance AB 1955. Now that it has the Senate’s approval, it goes back to the Assembly for another reading which includes new amendments. While the bill does not have a single vote of bipartisan support, it is likely to pass given the Democrats’ supermajority.
It is particularly disappointing to many that Sen. Min, who is himself a former educator, was not willing to break ranks over this highly contentious bill. However, it’s not terribly surprising given his history of trying to court the favor (and funds) of the powerful LGBTQ lobby.
“When the school groomed my daughter at the age of 11 into believing she was a boy, there were not many parents fighting against the schools,” said parent Bella Minor in her testimony before the Senate Appropriations Committee. “Had it been now, we would have sued the school for the bullying she received because the teachers treated her as a boy… If one parent per school district sues, that’s 954 lawsuits at 300,000. That’s a lot of money. Schools will be liable for pushing a mental health intervention that our European counterparts have stopped.”
Last month, several nations around the globe made landmark decisions to drop gender ideology from public school education materials including the United Kingdom and El Salvador. In doing so, they join the Netherlands, France, Sweden, Finland, and Norway—all of which have made similar efforts in the last year. Notably, these European nations are considered progressive in their own right, and many were championing gender ideology in schools long before Democrats in California and D.C. followed suit.
To that point, the practice of using gonadotropin-releasing hormone agonists (GnRHa) to halt puberty and enable children suffering gender dysphoria to transition is itself called the Dutch Protocol. Its namesake pays homage to the Holland of twenty years ago—a nation that has since done an about-face on the harmful interventions.
And while Britain’s National Health Service banned the use of puberty blockers for minors just last month, so-called “progressive” lawmakers like Sen. Min remain steadfast in their commitment to the divisive gender politics of yesteryear.
“Envy the Brits, Swedes, and so on for having public health establishments that can heed the science and reject this trendy nonsense,” writes the New York Post’s editorial board. “And worry about what other snake oil the guardians of American medicine are buying.”
