California officials misled a federal judge about policies that hide students’ “gender transitions” from parents at schools, bombshell documents uncovered by a legal firm appear to show.

On Monday, California officials will appear before U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez for a show cause hearing to provide evidence on why they shouldn’t be sanctioned for attempting to mislead the court about state policies that would prohibit parents from being informed about their children’s supposed “gender identity.” The hearing is the latest saga in a multi-year challenge to school policies adopted in California that teachers say would force them to lie to parents about students suffering from gender dysphoria. 

“We now have irrefutable evidence that the [California Department of Education] covertly moved these unconstitutional gender secrecy directives inside a password-protected training hidden away from public view, and distributed them to school districts statewide,” said Paul Jonna, a lawyer with the Thomas More Society. Jonna is representing two teachers, Elizabeth Mirabelli and Lori West, who sued the Escondido Union School District in 2023 over a policy that kept parents in the dark about their children’s so-called gender identity. 

The California Department of Education has argued that it should not be a party to the case because it claims not to have mandated parental exclusion. They claim that a frequently-asked-questions page posted by the department has been edited to show that they do not mandate parental exclusion, and so there is no more cause for complaint. The FAQ page included a line that said “with rare exceptions, schools are required to respect the limitations that a student places on the disclosure of their transgender status, including not sharing that information with the student’s parents.”

While that guidance was deleted, policies that kept parents in the dark about their children were still promoted in statewide teacher trainings.

Lawyers for the Thomas More Society obtained training materials developed by the state that appear to prove just that. The materials were found in California’s PRISM framework, which describes itself as “a six-course online training for certificated educators that provides resources to support LGBTQ+ youth.”

Currently, the materials are unavailable on the state’s website, but the Thomas More Society included them in a court filing. They can be viewed on a video uploaded to YouTube. 

Inside those materials is a section on “School Legal Responsibilities,” which it says includes mandates for “inclusive policies, respect for gender identity, anti-discrimination protections, and privacy rights.” It recommends and links to guidelines from the Our Family Coalition that say parents should be kept in the dark if they are not supportive.

“School staff must respect students’ right to privacy and may not affirmatively disclose a student’s LGBTQ status to others without the student’s permission,” the guidance from the San Francisco-based LGBT organization says. “Students have a right to privacy in personal information about their sexual orientation and gender identity, and outing students both at school or at home violates this right and also risks exposing students to harassment. If a student is not out at home, schools should offer them support for working towards family acceptance.”

Our Family Coalition.

The official teacher training also links to recommendations from the ACLU of Southern California that outline similar standards. 

“Generally, school staff cannot share information about your gender identity and sexual orientation without your permission, except under very limited circumstances, such as in case of an emergency,” the guidance says, adding that only in “limited circumstances” can school staff tell parents about their child’s gender identity. 

The PRISM training also linked to policies from the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network that stated, “School staff shall not disclose any information that may reveal a student’s transgender status to others, including parents or guardians.”

Jonna said the evidence that California officials attempted to mislead Benitez is damning. 

“The State claimed in court that it had rescinded the gender secrecy directives we are challenging,” he said. “But we now have evidence of a coordinated, statewide campaign to enforce Parental Exclusion Policies. The State Defendants are attempting to knowingly mislead a Federal Court in order to evade judicial review and prejudice Plaintiffs and the Certified Class. This is one of the most egregious attempts I’ve seen — if not the most — to mislead a Court, and it warrants severe sanctions.”

Benitez will also consider the constitutionality of “parental exclusion policies” on Monday. He has certified the case as a class action lawsuit, meaning that it will apply to any parent or teacher who objects to California’s policies. Those policies were put forth in California Assembly Bill 1955, which was signed by California Governor Gavin Newsom, and prohibits local school districts from passing measures requring teachers to inform parents about a student’s identity. 

Benitez, an appointee of President George W. Bush, already granted an injunction to Mirabelli and West back in 2023, protecting them from having to abide by the policy. 

Defendants in the case include Newsom, California Attorney General Rob Bonta, and gubernatorial candidate and California State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond. Bonta sued the Chino Valley Unified School District in August 2023 over a policy it implemented protecting parental rights to know how their children are identifying. 

Greg Burt, the vice president of the California Family Council, said that it appeared that the state was “scrambling” to hide its policies and that it looked like parents in the Golden State were going to pick up a win.

“We are very excited these two teachers, down in the San Diego area, stood up to the state and instead of just following what they were saying about keeping secrets they said they couldn’t do that,” he told The Daily Wire. “Their decision to be brave is going to have a positive, hopefully a positive effect on the entire state.”

The Regents of the Texas A&M University System voted unanimously on Thursday to adopt a policy requiring college presidents to sign off on any course that could be interpreted as pushing “race and gender ideology or topics related to sexual orientation or gender identity.”

The new policy seeks to prevent another controversy like the one that erupted at Texas A&M earlier this year when an English professor was filmed pushing pro-LGBT talking points during a children’s literature course. The policy approved by regents defines race ideology as “attempts to shame a particular race or ethnicity” or anything that “promotes activism on issues related to race or ethnicity rather than academic instruction,” The Texas Tribune reported. Gender ideology is defined under the policy as “a concept of self-assessed gender identity replacing, and disconnected from, the biological category of sex.”

The policy also prohibits professors from teaching any material that is not consistent with the approved syllabus. Enforcement of the policy is set to begin at all 12 colleges in the Texas A&M University System in the spring 2026 semester.

“What we’re doing is pretty simple,” regent Sam Torn told The Texas Tribune. “It’s not as complex. We’re simply making sure that we do educate, and we’re simply making sure that we teach what the course syllabus specifies that we teach.”

Videos obtained and shared by Republican Texas state Rep. Brian Harrison and first reported by The Daily Wire in September showed children’s literature professor Dr. Melissa McCoul advocating for leftist views on race and gender and asking one student who pushed back on her arguments to leave a lecture. The children’s literature course included material that advocated for introducing leftist gender ideas to children. One of the slides in the class was titled “Let’s talk gender in children’s lit!” and argued that “Childhood is the time for figuring out how to be a boy, girl, man, woman, or another gender.”

In a phone call with the student who publicly opposed the leftism espoused in the literature course, then-Texas A&M President Mark Welsh said, “There’s not a problem” with teaching LGBT literature as long as the university makes it clear it will be part of a class. When the student asked Welsh if any more changes would be made, such as firing McCoul, Welsh accused the student of attempting to “pick a fight,” adding that the university would not punish the professor.

Welsh stepped down as Texas A&M president less than two weeks after the videos and details of the children’s literature class were made public. A rule implemented in September requires that all course content at each of the Texas A&M System’s 12 schools be audited.

“It’s a serious system-wide review of every course, every syllabus,” Torn said on Thursday. “We are examining the body of knowledge behind each degree, low-producing programs, workforce relevance and financial stewardship.”

Rep. Harrison celebrated after the regents approved the new policy on race and gender ideology, saying that his use of social media to highlight the issue at Texas A&M “has done more this year to combat woke indoctrination than the entire Texas House and Texas Senate… combined.”

Some professors are concerned that the policy will only add confusion.

Geography professor Andrew Klein told the board of regents, “The vagueness of the language is problematic. Faculty are now assuming that all instructions in the topic of concern will be prohibited. Will subjects like medicine, public health and law, where such content is required to prepare professionals for the Texas workforce, be disallowed?”

Philosophy professor Martin Peterson added that academics must “seek the truth,” arguing, “When we seek the truth, we sometimes have to explore ideas that touch on controversial issues.”

“It is not always clear what counts as advocating for an ideology in those contexts,” Peterson said.

European history professor Miranda Sachs argued that the new rule would prevent her from addressing certain historical topics, such as the Holocaust. Regent John Bellinger responded to Sachs’s comment, saying, “There’s got to be some common sense in this.”

“I think we’re taking it a little bit too far when [we say] that we’re not going to teach about what happened in world wars,” Bellinger said.