According to court filings, a California school system has paid $100,000 to resolve a lawsuit over administrators’ claimed assistance for a student’s gender transition, which is said to have occurred without the mother of the child’s awareness.
approximately a year after Jessica Konen, the mother, filed the lawsuit, the Spreckels Union School District, which is located approximately 60 miles south of San Jose, agreed to the settlement in June. According to the lawsuit, the district and three of its workers “secretly convinced” Konen’s child that the youngster was bisexual and transgender and pushed the student to keep this a secret from Konen, so allegedly violated her 14th Amendment right to control her child’s upbringing.
Last month, a federal court authorized the settlement and later ordered the case to be dismissed with prejudice, preventing a re-filing.
The settlement, which clearly states that the defendants reject any liability in the case, is a compromise reached by the parties and does not amount to an admission of guilt.
The teachers listed in Konen’s lawsuit did not “coach” children on changing their gender identities, and neither did they mislead officials or parents, according to an independent inquiry the school district commissioned by a legal firm last year.
The investigation’s executive summary, which was based on over 1,600 pages of records and interviews with 21 witnesses, is no longer accessible on the school district’s website, but NBC News was able to obtain an archived copy of it.
The case was first filed in Monterey Superior Court in June 2022, and three months later it was transferred to California Northern District Court. The child attended Buena Vista Middle School in Salinas from the autumn of 2018 to the spring of 2021, and the school district, the principal, and two teachers were named as defendants. A jury trial, attorneys’ fees, more than $25,000 in damages, and a finding that the plaintiff’s rights were violated were all claimed in the lawsuit.
Founder of the conservative legal nonprofit Center for American Liberty and one of Konen’s attorneys, Harmeet Dhillon, said in a statement provided to NBC News that “Konen’s triumph strongly points out the principle that parents, not schools, have a fundamental right to shape their child’s upbringing.”
This agreement sends a clear message to other school districts that trying to discreetly transition a child without informing or getting permission from the parents will have serious consequences, according to Dhillon.
Requests for comment from the defendants’ lawyers and school district representatives went unanswered.
The case offers the most recent illustration of how anti-LGBTQ prejudice is showing up, in part, in the country’s schools, where conservative campaigners have attempted to outlaw LGBTQ-themed publications and LGBTQ-themed courses. In an effort to limit LGBTQ-related activities, Republicans have also proposed a nationwide version of Florida’s Parental Rights in Education Act, which detractors have called the “Don’t Say Gay” bill. The Florida statute served as an inspiration for similar laws introduced in other states: According to the American Civil Liberties Union, more than 30 new legislation pertaining to LGBTQ education will go into effect as soon as students return to school in the coming weeks in 17 states, barring legal challenges.
According to The Trevor Project, a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting LGBTQ youth, research has shown that welcoming school environments with a positive image of LGBTQ people and an understanding of LGBTQ issues in the curriculum can lower the suicide risk for LGBTQ youth, who already experience higher suicide rates than their cisgender and heterosexual peers.
Attorney General of California Rob Bonta made reference to that setting in a lawsuit he filed on Monday, claiming that a recent policy adopted by the board of education of the Chino Valley Unified School District violates the civil rights of LGBTQ students by requiring teachers to inform parents if their child recognizes as transgender in class or uses a name or pronoun other than what is listed on their birth certificate.
Democrat Bonta said in a statement that “the forced outing policy wrongfully threatens the physical, mental, and emotional health of non-conforming pupils who lack a welcoming atmosphere in the classroom and at home.”
Similar claims surrounding the Konen case were made in court documents filed in December by the Genders & Sexualities Alliance Network, an LGBTQ youth advocacy group. The group asserted that the Spreckels Union School District’s policy to respect students’ decisions about whether or not reveal information about their gender identity or sexual orientation to their parents complied with state law, which calls for school officials to affirm LGBTQ students’ identities and strongly advises that “teachers in private ask transgender or gender nonconforming pupils at the beginning of the academic year how they want to be addressed in class.”
The Genders & Sexualities Alliance Network stated in their filing that undermining these regulations would seriously jeopardize LGBTQ+ youth’s safety and assistance.