California v. Chino Valley Unified School District
What’s at stake: Protecting trans students from “forced outing” policies.
Summary: During the summer of 2023, Chino Valley Unified School District adopted Board Policy 5020.1, a forced outing policy. Under this rule, if a student requested to use a name or pronoun, or access school facilities or programs, not aligned with the sex identified on their birth certificate or other official records, schools would have to inform the student’s parents or guardians. As Rob Bonta, the California Attorney General put it, Chino Valley students were afraid “that the District’s policy w[ould] force them to make a choice: either ‘walk back’ their constitutionally and statutorily protected rights to gender identity and gender expression, or face the risk of emotional, physical, and psychological harm from non-affirming or unaccepting parents of guardians.”
After Chino Valley passed that policy, Bonta’s office filed a lawsuit against the school district on behalf of the people of California. The lawsuit asserted that the forced outing policy violated California’s equal protection clause, its education and government codes, and its constitutional right to privacy. Public Justice joined an amicus brief, written by the ACLU of Southern California and ACLU of Northern California, in support of the attorney general.
After a California court blocked the policy the school district voted to rescind the rule. In September 2024, the court issued a final ruling in the case, prohibiting the school district from reviving Board Policy 5020.1.
