The Huntington Beach City Council majority has supported a new law that would prevent educators working at city facilities from withholding any information related to children’s sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression from their parents.
The ordinance, passed by a split City Council on Tuesday, Sept. 3, is a challenge to a recently signed state law known as the SAFETY Act that made California the first state to prevent school districts from creating parental notification policies that would require forced disclosure of a student’s gender identity. It will need a second vote by the council to become law.
No educators at the city’s libraries, parks, recreational facilities or involved with city-sponsored programming “shall withhold any information related to a child’s sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression to parents of said children with or without the children’s consent,” the ordinance states.
The ordinance would also allow the City Council to authorize City Attorney Michael Gates to challenge the SAFETY Act in court and initiate legal action against the state on behalf of a parent that lives in the city “alleging violations of their rights” as a result of the new state law.
Mayor Gracey Van Der Mark was the push behind the ordinance and has said the state is “robbing parents of our rights and responsibilities to protect our children the best we can.” The law declares Huntington Beach a “Parents’ Right to Know” city.
Critics of the ordinance said it would make Huntington Beach children paranoid to be in their city.
“This ordinance does not protect our children, it places them at greater risk,” Councilmember Natalie Moser said. “It does not empower parents, it undermines the relationship with their children. And It does not serve our community. It divides us further.”
Moser said the ordinance fails to define who educators are, which could lead to “broad and potentially harmful interpretations” and isn’t clear what the consequences would be for violating the law.
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Teamsters Local 911 President Carlos Rubio, in a letter to the council, said the union, which represents some city employees, has not been notified which positions the new law would affect.
Councilmember Dan Kalmick called the law a massive expansion of government. The city, Kalmick said, provides services such as police, fire, EMS, community classes and summer camps, but he said the services don’t involve people’s gender “or watching who’s holding hands with whom.”
Kalmick said the ordinance would have the city using taxpayer money to represent aggrieved residents on the issue.
“That’s a very dangerous public policy,” he said.
Senior Deputy City Attorney Connor Hyland told the council that “it is odd” for the city to represent private individuals, but it has done so in the past. Hyland was asked by Kalmick to give examples of private individuals the city represented that weren’t city employees or elected officials, but Hyland wasn’t able to immediately provide any names in response.
Councilmember Tony Strickland said Sacramento lawmakers are the ones who are driving a wedge between parents and their children.
“I do think that some of the arguments of the other side are valid, but at the end of the day,” he said, “I’m going to fall on the side of parents’ right to know about what’s best for their children.”
