The federal court in California ruled in favour of the two teachers of Rincon Middle School in Escondido, California who sued their school district for imposing a restrictive, ‘woke’ policy regarding communication about gender issues with parents. The story originally broke in May of this year, when two Christian teachers, Elizabeth Mirabelli and Lori Ann West, took to the courts for remedy after their school forced them to withhold from the parents if their child was identifying as of another gender at school.

Their case was picked up by the Thomas More Society, ‘a national not-for-profit law firm dedicated to restoring respect in law for life, family, and freedom’, as they describe themselves on their website. Their legal counsel was able to convince the court to rule in favour of the plaintiffs in the first phases of the civil case. The judge assigned to the case issued a preliminary injunction, prohibiting the enforcement of the Escondido Union School District directive of instructing teachers not to tell the students’ guardians about a gender transition; while also denying the motion of the defendants (the Escondido Union School District and the California Department of Education) to dismiss the case.

The suit alleges that the school district allowed activists to ‘co-opt school districts to push gender theory,’

while also infringing on the defendants’ freedom of speech and religious liberty rights, enshrined in the First Amendment of the US Constitution.

The order by Judge Roger Benitez of the US District Court for the Southern District of California granting the injunction to halt the ‘woke’ policy was very explicitly critical of the practice, labelling it ‘a trifecta of harm’, writing:

‘The school’s policy…harms the child who needs parental guidance and possibly mental health intervention to determine if the incongruence is organic or whether it is the result of bullying, peer pressure, or a fleeting impulse.

It harms the parents by depriving them of the long recognized Fourteenth Amendment right to care, guide, and make health care decisions for their children. And finally, it harms plaintiffs [the teachers] who are compelled to violate the parent’s rights by forcing plaintiffs to conceal information they feel is critical for the welfare of their students — violating plaintiffs’ religious beliefs.’

The case can now move forward, although it has not been made public what other injunctions or damages the plaintiffs may be seeking.

Stark Contrast With Hungary

In the meantime, the Demographic Summit was held last week in Budapest, Hungary, where President Katalin Novák touched on the issue of schools potentially harming the development of children with harmful ideologies. It was actually the first point of her ‘the 12 points of the Hungarian families’ freedom fight’, which declared that we, as a nation, must have the freedom to raise our children, free from harmful ideologies.

In her speech at the summit, President Novák also referred to an iconic 1925 poem by Transylvanian poet Sándor Reményik titled Church and School, stressing the nation-building power of those institutions in the title, which is why she called on us all to keep defending them from subversive ideological influences.

The Hungarian government has already made significant steps in doing just that, mainly with the passing of the 2021 Child Protection Act, despite major pushback from Western governments and mainstream media.

The Child Protection Act prohibits the teaching of modern gender theory and the promotion of gender transition in public schools in Hungary.

Meanwhile in California, the most populous state in the United States, and where teachers Mirabelli and West are fighting their legal battle to keep ‘wokeism’ at bay in schools, the state’s Department of Education still has this policy on public record:

‘Revealing a student's gender identity or expression to others may compromise the student's safety. Thus, preserving a student's privacy is of the utmost importance. The right of transgender students to keep their transgender status private is grounded in California's anti-discrimination laws as well as federal and state laws. Disclosing that a student is transgender without the student's permission may violate California's anti-discrimination law by increasing the student's vulnerability to harassment and may violate the student's right to privacy.’

However, with the new ruling by the federal court, they may have to change that soon.

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