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On December 22, 2025, a federal district judge granted a request for a class-wide permanent injunction in Mirabelli, et al. v. Olson, et al.  The class members, a collection of teachers and parents, asked the court to prevent the California Attorney General and California Department of Education (“CDE”) from enforcing various laws that stopped teachers from informing parents of their children’s desire to be known by a different gender – including name and pronouns – at school.  The judge agreed, and ruled that Attorney General Robert Bonta and CDEcould not implement or enforce certain provisions of the California Constitution, Education Code and Regulations or guidance to do the following:

• Permit or require California state-wide education employees from concealing information about their child’s in-school gender presentation;
 
• Permit or require California state-wide education employees to use a name or pronoun other than the student’s legal name and pronouns associated with their gender assigned at birth when the parents have communicated that they object to that name and pronouns;
 
• Require California state-wide education employees to use a name or pronoun other than the student’s legal name and pronouns while concealing a social gender transition from parents if the employee has a conscientious or religious objection; or
 
• “in any way interfere with a teacher or other school administrator, counselor or staff from communicating to parents that his, her, or their child has manifested a form of gender incongruity such as changing preferred names or pronouns.”

The injunction also required that the PRISM training and similar trainings now prominently include the following statement:

Parents and guardians have a federal constitutional right to be informed if their public school student child expresses gender incongruence.  Teachers and school staff have a federal constitutional right to accurately inform the parent or guardian of their student when the student expresses gender incongruence.  These federal constitutional rights are superior to any state or local laws, state or local regulations, or state or local policies to the contrary.

Attorney General Bonta stated he plans to appeal the ruling, and asked the court to stay enforcement of the permanent injunction pending the appeal.

Even through school districts themselves are not defendants, this ruling has implications for districts and their policies because the Attorney General and CDE are no longer permitted to enforce the laws that form the foundation of policies prohibiting staff from sharing with parents that students are going by a differently gendered name and/or pronouns at school.  Importantly, the injunction does not require districts to affirmatively notify parents when a student goes by a different name and/or pronouns than those assigned at birth.  

F3 law is monitoring the status of the appeal and stands ready to advise its California clients regarding the implications of this ruling to their specific situations.  

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