California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta filed a lawsuit Monday against the Chino school district, ordering an end to a policy that requires notifying parents if their children change their gender identity, alleging it is discriminatory and violates civil rights and privacy laws.
The “parental notification” policy, which has been proposed by a handful of conservative-leaning districts in California, puts transgender and gender-nonconforming students in “danger of imminent, irreparable harm” by potentially forcibly “outing” them at home before they’re ready, according to the lawsuit.
In principle, where should the line be drawn between local and state control in matters like this? On the one hand, I think notification policies are mean-spirited and likely to do real harm. On the other hand, they have the support of the majority in these school districts. If we say that the state ought to override local policy in cases like this, what will we say in cases where a conservative state government is seeking to impose its will on progressive communities (sanctuary cities in states that are cracking down on illegal immigrants, municipalities refusing to enforce drug laws, etc.)?
(The answer is probably “neither side has a principled stance regarding the balance of power between state and local governments so we might as well do everything we can to support specific policies we agree with rather than abstract principles” but IMO it would be nice if there were commonly-accepted principles about this sort of thing.)
There was once a time where the majority was fine with segregation. The majority isn’t always right, and where they shouldn’t be given default control is imo when it affects the quality and safety of the lives of other people. We know for a fact that a policy like this will harm children, there are statistics to back it up.
If a local government was trying to make it legal to lynch minorities, then I don’t think there are many people who would argue that the state interfering would be a bad thing. This situation may not be quite as extreme, but it’s definitely not harmless either. If the state is seeking to do more direct harm to people, then it’s pretty obviously not a good thing. Unfortunately there are a lot of conservatives who just plain like harming people as long as those people don’t look like them 😒
The US is structured so that most of the legislation is (or was, anyway) done at the state level, as part of the whole “laboratory of democracy” thing, per the tenth amendment. The federal level is supposed to be pretty weak, mostly just coordinating between states and on international issues. So according to the design of the various levels of government, it’s correct that the state can override cities. (And in turn, Congress can override the states, but wasn’t supposed to happen that much.)
Of course this hasn’t really worked out in practice, with the federal government assuming more responsibilities. And I’m not saying any of this was a good or bad idea. But that’s how it was designed.