Coalition Attempts To Block California School District’s Critical Race Theory Ban, Transgender Policy
Kate Anderson on December 1, 2023
A coalition of parents, teachers and students in California asked the court for an injunction Thursday to halt Temecula Valley Unified School District from enforcing policies that require parents to be informed if their child wants to transition and bans curriculum about Critical Race Theory (CRT), according to court documents.
The coalition, led by the Public Counsel law firm, filed a lawsuit against the district in August for its 2022 ban on CRT and later amended the suit to include a policy requiring schools to inform parents on matters regarding their child’s gender identity, according to the East Bay Times. The coalition asked for a preliminary injunction this week to halt enforcement of both rules for the duration of the lawsuit, according to court documents.
“As a result of the Board’s censorship, Temecula students are being miseducated and left behind the rest of the State. Unless stopped, the Board’s actions will place these students at a permanent disadvantage in preparing for college, careers, and participation in a diverse democracy,” Amanda Mangaser Savage, supervising attorney of Public Counsel’s Opportunity Under Law project, said in a press release. “The stakes could not be higher: This is the first case to attack, head-on, efforts to spread censorship throughout California.”
The plaintiffs claim that the board has created a “dangerous and damaging” environment and that LGBTQ and “students of color” are being “stripped” of their rights to an education, according to the motion. The motion states that teachers must “broadly self-censor” and asked the court to temporarily halt the policies.
Supporters of the policies said that they appreciated the board standing firmly in support of parental rights, according to The Mercury News. One resident, Ryan Ramirez, said that supporters had been called “homophobes, transphobic, and this phobic and that phobic,” but that “many of us are Christians” and “love everybody.”
“To be able to tell us that we don’t have, we can’t be a part of something that might happen in our child’s lives is wrong,” Ramirez said.
“TVUSD is unable to comment on pending litigation,” a spokesperson for TVUSD told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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