A Sacramento suburban school district has asked a state appeals court to weigh in on an attempt by the district's teachers' union to force the district to rescind a policy requiring teachers and other school staff to notify parents if their children officially ask school staff to use different pronouns or otherwise recognize them as a gender different from their biological sex.
On Feb. 27, the Rocklin Unified School District filed a petition in the California Third District Court of Appeal, asking the court to overturn a ruling from the California state Public Employee Relations Board in favor of the union representing Rocklin public school teachers.
The Rocklin district board then followed that filing with a vote to hire the Liberty Justice Center, a nonprofit legal advocacy group, to represent the district in the proceedings.
Attorneys from the Liberty Justice Center have represented other school districts in proceedings in disputes with the state government over very similar legal questions.
In a release announcing the retention of LJC to represent the Rocklin school district, the Rocklin school district board released a joint statement saying:
“We remain committed to ensuring clarity and fairness in our policies,” the Board of the Rocklin Unified School District stated. “Our goal is to balance our legal obligations with our responsibility to students and families.”
LJC attorney and senior counsel Emily Rae added: “We are proud to once again take a stand for California families by defending the Rocklin Unified School District’s parental notification policy, at no cost to the District or to taxpayers."
Most recently, the LJC represented the Chino Valley Unified School District in San Bernardino County.
In that court fight, the Chino district and LJC "declared victory" after the California Attorney General Rob Bonta declined to appeal a ruling that would allow the school district to require school staff to notify parents of any changes to their children's official and unofficial school records, including concerning student gender identity, preferred pronouns and other considerations related to gender transitions.
The state action against the Chino Valley district was launched by Bonta's office directly, in a bid to smash a more stringent school policy which had initially required teachers and other school personnel to notify parents if they had reason to believe a student may be attempting to transition genders, such as by asking other students to identify them by a different name or pronouns.
While a judge blocked the more stringent notification requirements, he declined to strike down the school's policy regarding parental notification over changes to student records.
While the Chino Valley case continued, other districts in California have also wrestled with similar disputes.
LJC has also represented the Rocklin district in other litigation defending against an enforcement action brought by the state against the district over that same parental notification policy.
The Rocklin school district is centered on the city of Rocklin, located about 20 miles northeast of Sacramento.
The district had imposed its parental notification policy in September 2023.
Specifically, the policy required parents to be notified if their child requests to be identified as a gender other than the child’s biological sex; requests to use a name that differs from their legal name or use pronouns that do not align with the child’s biological sex; or requests access to sex-segregated school programs, activities, bathrooms, or changing facilities that do not align with the child’s biological sex.
The local teachers' union, known as the Rocklin Teachers Professional Association, objected to the policy change, lodging a complaint through the state's Public Employees Relations Board (PERB.) The complaint asserted the policy change was illegal because it wasn't approved through negotiations with the teachers' union.
The PERB agreed, and ruled in late January 2025 that the policy change violated the teachers' collective bargaining rights and state laws, which they said prohibit such notification policies.
Essentially, they argued the policy changed the duties of teachers to require them to divulge confidential information about students to parents, in violation of state law, which could result in professional or legal consequences for the teachers.
"... Every teacher could be forced to involve themselves in a student's private affairs notwithstanding state law, even in the presence of 'credible evidence that such notification may result in substantial jeopardy to the child's safety,'" the PERB wrote.
The notification policies, the PERB wrote, "thus directly conflict with the District's prior policy, with state law and guidance, and with employees' reasonable prior understanding of their job functions."
The PERB ordered the Rocklin school district to rescind the policy.
The members of the PERB were all appointed by Gov. Gavin Newsom.
The Rocklin district, however, appealed the PERB's ruling at the end of February, asking the appeals court to overturn the PERB decision and declare the teachers' union doesn't have an effective veto power over policy decisions enacted by the school district's elected leaders.
They noted other courts have explicitly determined that such policies, affecting the rights of parents and students alike, are "better suited for deliberation" by elected representatives.
The district said that makes collective bargaining, closed off to the public, "an inappropriate vehicle for resolution of this conflict."
"Permitting the RTPA (union) to negotiate the terms of parents' rights to be informed regarding the health of their children would significantly abridge the District's ability to carry out its managerial prerogative as well as its legal obligations," the school district wrote in its petition.
"To rule otherwise would invite serious consequences on a public school district's ability to carry out its duties because communication with parents is central to its operation.
In their opening brief at the Third District, the Rocklin district further argued the PERB overstepped the limits of its authority, by explicitly declaring the notification policy was illegal, trampling the rights of parents in the process.
"PERB's findings are clearly erroneous considering that when a child's constitutional right to privacy conflicts with a parent's constitutional interest in their child's health, Supreme Court precedent favors 'permitting the parents to retain a substantial, if not the dominant, role' in a health care decision," the school district wrote. "In other words, the constitutional rights of parents trump the constitutional rights of their children."
The district said such legal disputes are "beyond the purview of PERB's authority," which are limited to deciding issues related to collective bargaining between public workers' unions and the public bodies which employ them.
The balancing of legal rights of parents and their children against the authority of the school district should be reserved to the courts, the district said.
PERB and the Rocklin teachers' union has not yet responded to the school district's appeal petition.