A California school district will pay $100,000 to a mother who filed a lawsuit alleging that school officials encouraged her daughter to change genders without informing her.
Jessia Konen filed the lawsuit last year, alleging that Spreckels Union School District staff manipulated her daughter into identifying as transgender.
School personnel recruited her daughter, Alicia, into an “Equality Club” where the middle-school girl was taught about bisexuality, transgender identities, and other concepts in only the sixth grade, according to a statement from The Center for American Liberty (CAL), who represented the mother in the lawsuit.
School staff gave 11-year-old Alicia articles on how to conceal her identity as a boy from her mother. They also gave her a “Gender Support Plan” that required staff to refer to her by a male name and pronouns while allowing her to use the unisex teachers’ restroom.
Months later, “the school eventually told Konen it had socially transitioned Alicia behind her back and demanded Konen refer to her daughter by a male name and male pronouns,” the statement said.
“This is a huge win for Jessica and Alicia, and it’s also a win for parents across the country. Increasingly, schools are pushing radical gender ideology on young students and socially transitioning vulnerable children—without parental notification or consent,” CAL said in a statement announcing the settlement.
“Parents have a fundamental right to direct the upbringing of their children,” the statement added. “Parental Secrecy policies, as employed by the Spreckels Union School District and by schools across the country, unconstitutionally rob parents of that right.”
The settlement announcement came just one day after California Attorney General Rob Bonta sued the Chino Valley Unified School District over a policy requiring schools to notify parents if their children change their gender identity or pronouns.
Bonta argued that such policies forcibly “out” transgender students and that schools are the only safe haven for some.
Backlash to Bonta’s lawsuit was immediate, with many questioning why school officials are working to drive a wedge between parents and their children.
“Why are you authoritarians fighting so hard to keep sexual secrets about children from their own parents,” Cory DeAngelis, Executive Director of the Educational Freedom Institute, wrote in a post on social media platform on X.
why are you authoritarians fighting so hard to keep sexual secrets about children from their own parents https://t.co/La2ojP9NVC
— Corey A. DeAngelis, school choice evangelist (@DeAngelisCorey) August 30, 2023
Author and commentator Matt Walsh noted similarities in the efforts by transgender activists to recruit children to those of cults who prey on vulnerable individuals.
He posted to x:
When I call the trans movement a cult I mean it in a literal sense. It functions exactly like a cult. It uses all of the same indoctrination techniques. It picks out a vulnerable target, isolates the target from his family, love-bombs with excessive validation and flattery, demands progressively more extreme displays of fidelity to the cause, and viciously ostracizes and attacks anyone who leaves. This is all Cult 101 stuff. Trangenderism is one of the largest and most dangerous cults in world history.
When I call the trans movement a cult I mean it in a literal sense. It functions exactly like a cult. It uses all of the same indoctrination techniques. It picks out a vulnerable target, isolates the target from his family, love-bombs with excessive validation and flattery,…
— Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) August 29, 2023
