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Want to know what is happening with your child at school? If you live in California, don’t ask teachers. It could soon be against the law for them to tell you.

The California Senate just advanced a proposal that would make it illegal for school personnel to adopt a policy saying parents should be informed if their children say they are confused about their sex.

For decades, teachers have needed a parent’s permission to give students something as small as a cough drop. Under this proposal, if a minor child says she was born in the wrong body and wants to talk to a nurse to find out how to have her breasts removed, school policy could interfere.

School districts such as San Diego Unified have information on their website, including phone numbers and addresses, for the Planned Parenthood locations in the area. These abortion facilities offer what they wrongly call “gender-affirming care.” The facilities provide puberty blockers and wrong-sex hormones, often prescribed for off-label uses, that can have irreversible effects on a child’s body. The surgeries that sometimes follow will destroy a child’s sexual organs.

The proposal is a shocking attack on U.S. Supreme Court precedent and local school policies. The high court has held that individuals have a fundamental right to “marry, establish a home and bring up children” and that children are unable to make “sound judgments” about key decisions surrounding medical care.

Accordingly, some school districts in California decided it is best in their communities for educators to include parents in discussions with their children about sex and what are known as “gender dysphoric” symptoms. Policies that require parental involvement would be illegal under the new law.

If adults allow children to pursue transgender interventions that alter their biology, the effects can be dramatic even in the short term — but we don’t have reliable evidence on long-term effects. For these reasons and more, doctors at the National Health Service in England recently decided they will not prescribe hormone-altering drugs or other transgender interventions to children under the age of 16.

The new approach follows a crucial report. Researchers behind what is called “The Cass Report” found there is “not a reliable evidence base” to make “informed choices” when it comes to transgender-identifying children and medicine. “For the majority of young people, a medical pathway may not be the best way to manage their gender-related distress,” researchers wrote.

But in California, parents will not have the chance to help their own children with these decisions.

California’s proposal comes at an auspicious time: just days before the state Senate sent the proposal back to the assembly for confirmation, two courts ruled against the Biden administration’s attempt to redefine “sex” to mean “sexual orientation and gender identity” in federal law. If the administration’s rule change succeeds, it would allow boys to participate in girls’ sports and use girls’ bathrooms and locker rooms, both highly unpopular policies, according to surveys.

The changes are not only unpopular but also unsafe. It gives individuals with bad intentions easier access to the private spaces of women and girls. Twelve-year-old girls would find themselves exposed to naked teenage males. There are currently more than a half-dozen lawsuits fighting against the rule change.

California lawmakers may be able to slip their “gender secrecy agenda” into state law, but given the response to the Biden administration’s attempted Title IX rule change, legal challenges are sure to follow. The California Policy Center reports that at least two school districts have settled with parents and teachers who opposed transgender secrecy.  

California’s law simultaneously puts children at risk, limits teacher freedom, and divides families. Under the guise of “not taking sides” between parents and their children regarding gender dysphoric symptoms, California lawmakers are choosing to abandon the responsibility to protect young people from dangerous health-related decisions.

Parents can only assume that teachers are not giving them the whole story when they ask how their child is doing. The new law could allow students to permanently damage their bodies when a phone call to a parent or guardian could have saved each child from making a life-altering decision.

Jonathan Butcher is the Will Skillman fellow in education at The Heritage Foundation.