TWIBS: Judge Benitez Says Trans Kids Have No Rights
A federal judge ruled on Monday that teachers and other school employees should be required to report any changes in a child’s gender identity to their parents, a ruling which may violate state laws and will certainly endanger vulnerable children.
by Aly Gibbs
This Week in Barrel Scraping (TWIBS) is Assigned Media’s longest running column! Every Friday, Aly Gibbs digs deep from the well of transphobia and finds the most obnoxious, goofy thing transphobes have said or obsessed over during the week and tears it to shreds.
Conservatives are big fans of disguising their hate with buzzwords. When they bemoan “cancel culture,” what they really mean is they’re scared of facing the consequences of the things they say and do. When they gripe about “DEI,” they’re saying they don’t want to have to treat other people equitably. When they defend their “traditional values,” they’re talking about evangelical bigotry.
Perhaps most galling, when they talk about “parents’ rights,” what they really want is to ensure that queer kids (especially transgender youth) can’t safely express their identity to a trusted adult without the state forcing that adult to rat them out to their parents.
On Monday, U.S. District Court Judge Roger Benitez, a judge in the United States District Court for the Southern District of California, handed down a 52-page opinion for the case Mirabelli v. Olson. Benitez, a George W. Bush appointee, asked in his ruling whether or not parents had a right to know facts about their child’s identity per Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee to due process and the First Amendment’s protections for the free exercise of religion. He concluded, in a word, yes.
“Parents have a right to receive gender information and teachers have a right to provide to parents accurate information about a child’s gender identity,” he said buffoonishly. I mean, gender information? This is your justification for federally mandating snitching? Besides that, in what world is parent-teacher communication subject to the fucking due process of law?
Disrespectfully, Judge Benitez, what are you smoking?
California Attorney General Rob Bonta’s office said, of the ruling, “The Court’s sweeping injunction, which forecloses enforcement of state constitutional and statutory protections applicable in the school environment, inflicts severe and indisputable irreparable harm on California.”
The state filed an appeal on the ruling and, in the meantime, requested an injunction to prevent Judge Benitez’s opinion from being legally enforced. “We believe that the district court misapplied the law and that the decision will ultimately be reversed on appeal,” Attorney General Bonta’s office told The Mercury News. “We are committed to securing school environments that allow transgender students to safely participate as their authentic selves while recognizing the important role that parents play in students’ lives.”
Tony Hoang, Equality California’s executive director, said in a statement, “Judge Benitez’s dangerous ruling goes far beyond the SAFETY Act and broadly targets numerous California laws and protections for transgender and gender-nonconforming students – attempting to invalidate critical safeguards that prevent forced outing and allow educators to respect a student’s affirmed name and pronouns at school. These protections exist for one reason: to keep students safe and ensure schools remain places where young people can learn and thrive without fear.”
This isn’t the first time we’ve seen rulings and legislation that seeks to force teachers and school employees to out queer kids to their parents. That sort of targeted evil was also a key component of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ 2022 “Don’t Say Gay” bill, and DeSantis and all of his cronies used the same lie to sell that bigotry, too: Parents have a right to know.
Well, what about the rights of children? Why aren’t they granted the autonomy to share their identity with people they feel they can trust, and withhold it from people they know would use it to hurt them? Why must every LGBTQ+ child in Southern California, Florida, Louisiana, and wherever else they try to push these draconian rules, find themselves at the mercy of parents who despise them for who they are? Why must every teacher be forced to do harm to the children they’re meant to protect, or risk their careers to conceal information told to them in confidence?
Why can’t a trans child just be addressed using the name and pronouns that make them happy, and comfortable?
Benitez is wrong, these rules are wrong, this nation is unspeakably morally bankrupt, and I hope the state’s appeal of the ruling works out, because it’s terrible enough when a child feels unsafe in their own home. These culture war vultures shouldn’t be able to make them feel unsafe everywhere else, too.
Aly Gibbs (She/They), formerly Alyssa Steinsiek, is a trans writer who reports on news important to the queer community.
