Ashton Lee, 16, a transgender boy from Manteca and advocate for the law. Credit: Gay-Straight Alliance Network

Ashton Lee, sixteen, a transgender boy from Manteca and advocate for the constabulary. Credit: Gay-Direct Alliance Network

As efforts to overturn a new law allowing transgender students to use bathroom facilities and participate in sports teams consistent with their gender identity gain momentum, repeal of the constabulary would take no affect on many existing policies protecting transgender rights in youth sports, according to legal advocates.

It would also, they say, non bear upon more comprehensive anti-bigotry policies in four school districts, including Los Angeles Unified.

Privacy for All Students, a Sacramento-based coalition of advocacy and religious groups, said this week that it had submitted 620,000 signatures – some 115,000 more than the 505,000 signatures required past the California Secretary of Country – to put a referendum on the ballot challenging Associates Bill 1266, which Gov. Jerry Brown signed into police force on Aug. 12. The constabulary allows transgender students to participate in school sports teams and other activities, and to use bathrooms, locker rooms and other facilities consistent with a pupil's gender identity, regardless of the gender listed on the student's records.

Repeal of the police force, said Frank Schubert, campaign manager for Privacy for All Students, would requite local school districts the flexibility to "seek less intrusive alternatives, such every bit admission to a teacher'due south facility, a unmarried-stall restroom, private changing times" rather than assuasive transgender students to employ full general student bathrooms and locker rooms consistent with their gender identity. Schubert is the national political director for the National Organisation for Wedlock, which was heavily involved in organizing for the 2008 election initiative that outlawed same-sexual activity marriages, known as Suggestion 8.

Fifty-fifty if the referendum were successful, repeal of the law would non affect existing California and federal laws, or school district and California Interscholastic Federation policies, that offering some protection for transgender students, said Ilona Turner, legal director of the Transgender Constabulary Center, an Oakland-based organization that is involved in litigation across the country. Federal and country laws prohibit discrimination at school on the basis of gender identity, Turner said, but don't provide detail about what that ways for schoolhouse districts. The number of transgender adults is estimated to be near 0.5 percent of the state's population, and the per centum of transgender youth would be lower, Turner said. The term transgender refers to those who identify with a gender that differs from their sexual activity.

Turner said repeal of the police would not bear on the new regulation recently put in place by the California Interscholastic Federation that allows transgender students to participate in athletic events based on their gender identity – a boy who has established an identity as a girl playing on a girls' basketball team, for instance.

The Federation, the governing body for loftier school sports in the land, secured protections for transgender educatee athletes in February 2022 when it voted to include in its bylaws the statement that all students should have the opportunity to participate in high schoolhouse sports activities "in a way that is consistent with their gender identity, irrespective of the gender listed on a student's records." That bylaw took effect Aug. one.

Four school districts – Los Angeles Unified, San Francisco Unified, San Rafael City Schools and Willits Unified – accept policies in place to allow transgender students to participate in all aspects of schoolhouse life co-ordinate to their cocky-identified gender, according to Carolyn Laub, executive director of the Gay-Directly Brotherhood Network. Those policies also would non alter if the law is repealed.Laub's grouping and others have created a website chosen Support All Students to explain the law and its implementation to parents, students and teachers.

In Los Angeles, the district has had a transgender inclusion policy since 2005, said Judy Chiasson, coordinator in the Office of Human being Relations, Diversity and Equity of Los Angeles Unified. "What our policy states is that transgender boys and transgender girls get to go to schoolhouse like all other boys and girls," Chiasson said. "It has worked out incredibly well."

She added, "It solves problems, it does not crusade them. Because of our transgender policies and practices, our transgender students are able to engage in their education and feel part of the schoolhouse community."

Karen England, co-chair of Privacy for All Students, said the new police force "violates the rights and privacy of 99 percent of students" and "mandates that you allow the mixing of showering and restrooms with biological boys and girls."

"How bad is AB 1266, the co-ed bathroom pecker?" the organization asks in a downloadable flier on its website. "It's atrocious. This legislation invades the privacy of our children while they are in the near vulnerable areas of a school – showers, residue rooms and locker rooms. The neb allows whatsoever student to use the facilities reserved for the opposite sex simply by asserting a vague 'gender identity.' The nib contains no definitions, rules, standards or guidelines. It merely creates a right for students of the opposite sex to use the most sensitive private areas at school."

Campaign director Schubert said in an email, "To be certain, we do not believe that opening private areas of schools such as showers and bathrooms to members of the biologic sexual practice is an appropriate response to concerns nearly bullying, but at least when left to local schoolhouse districts parents have an opportunity to help shape and change policies as they are developed and implemented."

If the signatures are validated, the new law would not go into effect as scheduled on January. ane, 2014. Instead, the referendum would inquire voters in November 2022 to either uphold or repeal the police. A referendum is far less common than the election initiatives Californians take grown accustomed to – fewer than l referendums have been put on the state ballot in the last 100 years and fewer than 25 have been successful, according to the California Secretary of State'southward office.

Supporters of the referendum include the California Republican Party and a coalition of religious groups. A number of significant financial contributions helped support the grouping in its signature-gathering drive. Large donors reported by the campaign this week included Florida columnist Rebecca Hagelin and her hubby, who donated $25,000 to the campaign; Colorado residents Kenneth and Roberta Eldred, co-founders of the Christian charity grant-maker Living Stones Foundation, who gave $10,000; and Assemblywoman Kristin Olsen of Modesto, who gave $10,000. Sean Fieler, president of the hedge fund Equinox Partners in New York, gave $80,000 in September, $70,000 in October and $50,000 in Nov.

Supporters of Assembly Bill 1266, which was authored past Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, D-San Francisco, include the California State PTA, the California Association of School Counselors, the California Teachers Clan and the California Federation of Teachers.

Jane Meredith Adams covers pupil wellness. Contact her or follow her @JaneAdams.

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