Karen England, the executive director of the Capitol Resource Institute (CRI) – a partner in the Privacy for All Students Coalition (PFAS) – spoke March 10 to a Salt and Light Ministry meeting at Calvary Chapel Golden Springs in Diamond Bar about the School Success and Opportunity Act, or AB1266. AB1266 is the bill that codified existing transgender students’ rights to be treated in accordance with their gender identity, specifically to public accommodation protections.
I attended the meeting specifically to hear what England had to say about the bill which as of Jan. 1 is state law, as well as the PFAS coalition’s plans on what next steps they were going to take.
The California School Boards Association came out with a model policy for transgender students across the state earlier this year, and many school boards across the state are writing, or have written, policies that require consistent expression of identity. England and PFAS believe that those policies are against the plain language of AB1266, and are therefore unlawful.
“As a matter of fact, [AB1266] is so radical,” stated England during the presentation, “that both Los Angeles’ and San Francisco Unified’s current policy are in violation of AB1266 because they put boundaries around them. They say you have to … assert your gender consistently and exclusively. So, you can’t go back and forth between boy-girl girl-boy, and you have to consistently; and this is still very vague in the law … I still oppose it no matter how sincere they are, but it shows you how San Francisco Unified’s policy violates AB1266.”
What we can expect from PFAS is multiple lawsuits.
Likely first, they’re going to attempt to claw back the 17,000 signatures they need to qualify the referendum for November.
“We really believe once we file our lawsuit and we prevail over some of these different issues [regarding voter signatures being improperly invalidated] that they will have to put those back in and we will be able to get the 17,000 just based on the handful of counties we have been in,” England continued.
England anticipates several lawsuits based on the California state Constitution’s enunciation of a right to privacy that is also explicitly spelled out in the California Education Code.
“I do believe there will be numerous lawsuits,” England said in her presentation, “and I do believe we will be successful because of the invasion of privacy that this does on so many students. But it is going to take someone’s privacy to be invaded – a lawsuit, those kinds of things … I do believe this will be an issue and I do believe we will prevail.”
The Pacific Justice Institute, an organization that just this month was added to the Southern Poverty Law Center’s listing of hate groups because of their antitransgender activities and is a partner in the PFAS coalition, last August went looking for plaintiffs for the privacy lawsuits.
“We at the Pacific Justice Institute,” stated their executive director Brad Dacus in a YouTube video, “stand ready and willing to defend anyone who’ll be victimized as a result of this new law. That includes someone whose privacy rights have been violated in the bathroom, in the locker room, in the showers or someone who is prevented from playing on a sports team because someone from the opposite gender took their place.”
There is a certain amount of secrecy that the PFAS coalition wants to maintain regarding their activities related to AB1266 and they’re making their volunteers sign confidentiality agreements.
What PFAS says when they think no one is listening amounts to planning to continue to target the T youth of the LGBT community. In a room of about 50 mostly middle age conservative Christians, with feedback from them that sometimes caused my skin to crawl it’s a future none of us in the LGBT community should be pleased about.
I do wonder if there is not truth in the suggestion that some will push to have the law interpreted much broadly. The California School Boards Association took the smart path, and basically went with the policies already in place, which are not what the transgender extremist wanted. Some have been on record, in cases involving adults, asserting that restrictions based on avoidance of women being forced to see nude males in women’s spaces are unacceptable.
And if it turns out, as is very possible and perhaps even probable, that the signature count was overly restrictive, that is very likely to backfire and result in the proposition winning if it makes it to the ballot.
If the current rules are followed, there is little chance of a privacy lawsuit succeeding. If the law is is strictly interpreted as written, well…then it would be a different situation, as well it should be. At some point, simple common sense has to prevail.
These people are disgusting. They lose the war against equality for gays and lesbians, so they move on to targetting trans kids. Fortunately they’re gradually shuffling off and leaving less hateful people behind them.