California lawmakers have once again placed themselves at the forefront of anti-family policy – and perhaps created a major headache for Kamala Harris’s nascent presidential campaign – with their recent passage of the most extreme legislation on transgenderism to date.
Known as the “SAFETY Act,” this far-left bill, which Governor Gavin Newsom signed into law last month, introduces a sweeping set of mandates that deeply endanger parental rights and advance radical gender ideology as the official policy of California’s education system. Despite this legislation’s threats to the health and well-being of children and families across the Golden State, Vice President Kamala Harris, who has her own history of embracing far-left gender ideology, has studiously avoided commenting on it.
The SAFETY Act fundamentally alters how transgender issues are handled in schools and medical settings. It mandates that public schools allow students to self-identify their gender and access facilities that align with their gender identity, not their biological sex. Even more alarmingly, the law prevents individual school districts from requiring the disclosure to parents of this vital information about their children.
In other words, if a student begins identifying as the opposite sex or by a different name at school, California school districts are now not only required to adopt that self-identity, but their teachers and administrators are also prohibited from sharing that information with parents. This undermines the fundamental role of parents in safeguarding their children’s well-being and making critical decisions about their health.
Moreover, the SAFETY Act extends its reach further into schools by mandating that educational institutions accommodate and promote gender identity changes among students. This includes altering school records and facilities to reflect a student’s self-identified gender. These measures not only infringe on the privacy and safety of other students, but also impose ideological frameworks on educational environments, causing confusion and conflict among students, parents, and staff.
The requirement for schools to support these changes without exception also forces teachers to accept radical progressive, anti-scientific views on gender. This seriously infringes on the First Amendment’s protections for the free exercise of religion by forcing Christian teachers and administrators to support practices and ideologies that violate their sincerely held beliefs about gender and sexuality.
By enabling minors to make life-altering decisions without parental input, and furthermore treating parents as a potential threat to their own children, California is establishing a dangerous precedent that could have far-reaching impacts beyond the 5.8 million students in the California public school system. In other policy areas like vehicle emissions regulations and minimum wage hikes, California has served as a blueprint for liberal states and Democrat politicians at the federal level. Transgenderism could be no different.
In light of this, Americans deserve to know where Vice President Kamala Harris – who hails from California – stands on her home state’s radical new position on transgender policy. Harris has been conspicuously silent on the legislation since it became law, but her record as a U.S. Senator and vice president indicates that the SAFETY Act could be just the sort of thing Americans might expect nationwide with her in the Oval Office.
As the far-left publication Slate reported late last month, Harris has been “very progressive” on the issue of transgenderism over the course of her two decades in politics, with activist Shannon Minter calling her a “steadfast, committed, and well-informed ally.”
In 2019, for instance, Harris indicated that she would support taxpayer-funded gender transitions for incarcerated individuals. In 2017, Harris co-sponsored the so-called “Equality Act,” a far-left bill that would have enshrined transgender ideology in federal law and discriminated against religious Americans. As National Review reported at the time, “The Equality Act would redefine sex to include ‘gender identity,’ thus forcing every federally funded entity — most notably schools and colleges — to treat males who declare transgender status as if they were females.”
As vice president, Harris has also embraced a role as a champion of transgender and LGBTQ ideology. She has been a chief propagator of claims that efforts to remove sexually explicit LGBTQ materials from school libraries amount to “book bans,” and has touted her role in the administration’s Title IX rewrite, which gutted crucial protections for women and girls and requires schools to allow males access to girls’ restroom and locker room facilities.
Notably, the administration’s new Title IX rules discourage schools from telling parents if their child has chosen a new gender identity – effectively a slightly watered-down version of the California law. It is not a far leap to suggest that a President Kamala Harris could move to match California or even enact a nationwide blanket ban on schools disclosing such information to parents at all.
Parental rights have thus far remained a secondary issue in the 2024 campaign. But if Harris is held to account for her past record on the issue and pressed to take a stance on this recent development in her home state, it could explode back to the forefront of the public consciousness. If prior results are any indication, that would be a positive development for conservatives – and every American parent – come November.
Allison Schuster is a contributor for AMAC Newsline, the Federalist, American Greatness, and the Conservateur, as well as a proud 2021 graduate of Hillsdale College.
