A mom in Chico has secured a new chance to continue suing her community's public school district for "socially transitioning" her 11-year-old daughter and counseling her on transgender surgical options and other gender-related matters without telling the mother.
On April 4, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals agreed a federal judge had improperly dismissed the complaint filed by Aurora Regino against the Chico Unified School District, through district personnel including the district's Superintendent Kelly Staley.
In the ruling, the judges said U.S. District Judge John A. Mendez had improperly brushed aside Regino's claims that the Chico district had ignored her fundamental rights as a parent when school staff allegedly helped Regino's daughter decide she should identify for a time as a boy and encouraged her to transition, without ever informing Regino they were doing so.
The appellate ruling does not declare Regino's lawsuit is correct or that she has the fundamental parental rights she claims. However, they said Mendez failed to conduct a proper constititional rights analysis, and simply declared Regino didn't have the parental rights she claimed before he dismissed her lawsuit.
The appellate judges directed Mendez to take the case again and conduct the required analysis before ruling on the request from Staley and the Chico district to dismiss Regino's lawsuit.
The case landed in federal court in Sacramento in 2023, shortly after she reportedly learned that a Chico school guidance counselor joined with other school staff to attempt to "socially transition" Regino's then-5th grade daughter from female to male.
According to court documents, the child, identified as A.S., was allegedly undergoing a difficult time in life in the 2021-2022 school year, which coincided with the death of her grandmother and her mother's treatment for breast cancer.
According to court documents, the girl met with counselors, including a guidance counselor at Sierra View Elementary School.
According to court documents, during that time, a counselor regularly visited A.S.'s class, often discussing "issues of gender identity and sexuality," while reminding students to use "services provided by the counselor's office."
According to court documents, A.S. was already meeting with school counselors to discuss her feelings of anxiety and depression.
However, in early 2022, A.S. reportedly "visited the counselor and told her that she 'felt like a boy.'"
At that point, the counselor reportedly "asked A.S. whether she would like to go by a different name, and whether she would prefer to be addressed with male pronouns."
When A.S. allegedly said she would, the counselor then told her classroom teacher and other school staff and students to refer to her by a new name, identified as "J.S.," and by male pronouns.
Further, the counselor told A.S. she should not tell her mother about the changes at school and later provided her with information "about a local community group that advocated for LGBTQ+ causes and also discussed 'top surgery' and 'breast binding.'"
According to court documents, Regino did not learn of what was happening with her daughter at the school until A.S. told her grandmother, who then "promptly told Regino."
While Regino reportedly "let A.S. know that she supported her and would assist in her transition, if that was what A.S. wanted," Regino also "arranged for A.S. to begin counseling sessions to discuss her depression and anxiety."
She then reportedly "contacted the school to report that the counselor and other personnel had not told her that they had begun to refer to A.S. by a different name and with male pronouns," and she objected to the process playing out without her involvement and "without first seeking guidance from a mental health professional."
According to court documents, Regino ultimately met with Staley and "sought assurances that what happened with A.S. would not happen again with A.S. or with Regino's younger daughter, C.S."
However, the school district offered no such assurances, instead informing Regino of the district's policy requiring teachers and other school staff "to address a student by a name and the pronouns consistent with the student's gender identity" and barring school staff from "revealing a student's transgender status to individuals who do not have a legitimate need for the information, without the student's consent" - a list of individuals which the district believed did not include the student's parents.
The policy was in line with guidance from the California Department of Education, which says schools should not notify parents of changes in a student's gender identity until the student says to do so.
According to court documents, A.S. soon after decided to again identify as a girl and abandon the attempted transition.
Regino later filed suit, asserting the policy, as interpreted, violated her constitutional rights as a parent.
She was aided in the lawsuit by attorneys from the organization known as the Center for American Liberty.
In a statement discussing the case at the time it was filed in 2023, the Center for American Liberty said the Chico schools policy - as well as the California state guidance - "flips the Constitution on its head."
"Parents have a fundamental right under the Fourteenth Amendment to direct the upbringing of their kids—at a minimum this includes being made aware of life-changing decisions being made at school. And it would certainly prohibit a school guidance counselor from actively excluding a parent from such a decision, as was the situation here. A.S. wanted to talk to her mom about her 'transition,' but her guidance counselor manipulated her into keeping her mom in the dark," the Center for American Liberty said.
In Sacramento federal district court, Mendez sided with the school district, finding Regino's lawsuit had "failed to adequately allege the existence of a cognizable fundamental right" which should allow the school district to enact and carry out the policy at issue in the case.
But on appeal, the Ninth Circuit judges said Mendez had failed to follow proper rules of constitutional analysis when rejecting Regino's claims.
"Because existing precedent did not expressly address Regino’s articulation of her asserted fundamental rights, the district court held that the rights she asserted were not fundamental," the appeals court wrote. "This was error."
They said the Ninth Circuit has never used that standard to decide cases involving claims of fundamental rights.
For that reason, the judges said the case should be revived and Mendez should be made to properly evaluate Regino's constitutional claims.
The appellate judges shied away from deciding any questions concerning the merits of Regino's claims at this point, saying neither side had properly presented its competing claims and arguments to allow the court to rule at this point.
The case had drawn significant public attention, including briefs filed by large groups of state attorneys general, with California Attorney General Rob Bonta joining with other Democratic state attorneys general in support of the Chico district and its policy, and nearly two dozen Republican state attorneys general siding with Regino.
A large number of other organizations and groups from both sides also filed briefs with the court in the case.
The decision was authored by Ninth Circuit Judge Morgan Christen. Judges Kim McLane Wardlaw and Mark J. Bennett concurred in the ruling.