Last week, New Jersey’s transgender community celebrated after an appellate panel upheld a lower court ruling that school districts cannot require staff to notify parents if a student’s gender identity changes at school.
However, some districts declared victory, focusing on a few lines in a pair of rulings issued Monday that confirmed school officials are not required to follow state guidance issued in 2018 directing districts to accept a student’s gender identity change without notifying parents.
One district wasted no time spiking the football. Middletown Township’s school board held a special meeting Thursday night with only one agenda item: abolishing the “anti-parent policy,” as board President Frank Capone put it, that board members adopted in 2019 to comply with the state’s 2018 guidance, known as Policy 5756.
In a three-minute meeting, the board repealed the policy with no public comment, one no vote, and a brief speech from Capone.
“Let this outcome send a clear message to Governor Murphy and Attorney General Platkin: It is time to stop using our children as pawns in political games.” “Middletown will not accept the abuse,” he stated.
“This vote to rescind Policy 5756 will guarantee no child faces individual discrimination, and every parent in this district will remain actively involved in their child’s education with complete transparency in Middletown.”
The rulings come as the Trump administration seeks to limit transgender students’ rights and protections. President Donald Trump has banned gender-affirming care for transgender youth, prohibited transgender athletes from participating in girls’ and women’s sports, and directed federal education officials to erase transgender athletes’ records.
The legal battle in New Jersey began nearly two years ago, when Attorney General Matt Platkin sought and obtained judicial orders blocking parental notification policies in Middletown, Marlboro, Manalapan, and Hanover school districts that he claimed violated transgender students’ rights under the state’s Law Against Discrimination.
In Monday’s rulings, a three-judge appellate panel upheld the preliminary injunctions, affirming lower court decisions that favored Platkin.
The judges agreed that the districts’ parental notification policies would subject transgender students to disparate treatment, including potential mental health issues, family backlash, housing instability, and other harms, in violation of the Law Against Discrimination. The judges also stated that if school staff do not comply with disclosure requirements, they will face discipline.
While parents have the right to direct their children’s upbringing, case law “has not extended that right to require schools to affirmatively provide parents with information,” the judges wrote.
Parents can still access their children’s student records, and the injunctions do “not prevent students from voluntarily sharing information about their gender identity or expression with their parents,” they added.
However, the judges noted that the injunctions were only temporary until the state’s Division of Civil Rights made a final decision on the matter.
The judges wrote that the agency has made no substantive progress on the issue since lower courts issued the injunctions in 2023. If it does not make “reasonable progress soon,” they said, district officials can ask the court to lift or modify the injunctions.
Attorney Michael J. Gross, who represents Marlboro, saw it as a victory.
“The Division of Civil Rights is not doing anything in this case, and they’ve sat on it for more than 18 months,” Mr. Gross said. “So we were happy to see that the Appellate Division panel unanimously agreed that the Division of Civil Rights hasn’t done what they were supposed to do.”
Capone echoed that sentiment Thursday night.
“For the past 18 months, we have dealt with an attorney general who misused his authority to convert a temporary injunction into a permanent one,” he claimed.
Platkin’s office, which oversees the division, declined to comment on the delay.
The fight to protect transgender students’ rights gears up for new battles in New Jersey, Tehsin Pala reports. Controversial efforts to repeal policies protecting trans students are gaining traction, drawing strong responses from LGBTQIA+ advocacy organizations.prismreports.org/2024/12/04/t…
Supporters of parental notification, such as Sen. Declan O’Scanlon (R-Monmouth), argue that the court battle and Monday’s rulings have resulted in “no policy at all …a net negative for trans kids.”
However, Christian Fuscarino, the executive director of Garden State Equality, claimed that the districts essentially forced the state to take them to court to ensure that transgender students receive the legal protections they require. Fuscarino’s group submitted briefs supporting the state’s case.
“We are forced into this position when school districts decide to pass policies that could potentially out them to families that may kick them out of their homes,” according to Fuscarino. “LGBTQ youth account for 40% of the total youth homeless population. To suggest that all young LGBTQ people are raised in loving and affirming homes is to ignore a difficult statistic.”
Platkin said in a statement that the state agrees that parents should be involved in making important decisions for their children.
However, the courts correctly ruled that schools cannot have a blanket policy that unfairly forces educators to choose between endangering a vulnerable child’s safety and well-being if they notify parents of gender identity changes and losing their jobs if they don’t, Platkin explained.
“All our lawsuits have sought to do is to reinstate the status quo that has existed for years without controversy — one that was put in place by Gov.
Chris Christie and that respects the need for parents to be informed about their children while safeguarding the civil rights of all students,” he said, referring to the 2017 law that directed the state Department of Education to issue guidance on transgender students.
The Education Law Center, led by Robert Kim, has advocated against parental notification policies. He found the rulings significant in light of the Trump administration’s actions on this issue.
“When you have a federal government that is hell-bent on targeting transgender students for not only disfavorable treatment, but for non-recognition completely, then it’s all the more important to rely on the parallel system of government in our country, which is the state governments and the state courts,” Kim told the crowd.
“It’s a positive development that both the executive and judicial branches of New Jersey can signal that they have independent authority to protect students from discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, given what’s happened over the last 23 days out of Washington,” Kim pointed out.