New Jersey Attorney General Matt Platkin is stepping in to make sure a number of local school districts rescind their policies requiring staff to inform parents of their child’s decision to transition genders, filing “emergency” lawsuits against them over the allegedly “discriminatory” policy.
“Without question, the discriminatory policies passed by these boards of education, if allowed to go into effect, will harm our kids and pose severe risk to their safety,” Platkin said.
Nikki Stouffer, the founder of the New Jersey Project, a union of parents from across The Garden State, said the policy is not only what parents want, but it’s also what her group has pushed to put in place.
“We want transparency with the school,” she told Fox News’ Will Cain on Sunday. “Our children are safer when we know more about what’s happening in school. Why in the world would the AG and [Gov. Phil] Murphy think that it would be appropriate to hide any sort of information from parents?”
“[They think] we would only hurt our kids if we found out that they were being bullied and at risk for suicide,” she continued.
The three school districts in Platkin’s line of fire – Middletown school district, Marlboro school district and Manalapan-Englishtown Regional school district – approved their transgender student policies just last Tuesday, one day before the lawsuit.
The controversial policy states that faculty and staff must alert parents if their child begins using a different name, pronoun or bathroom contrary to their biological sex.
State officials, on the other hand, allege that “outing” the students will not only facilitate a more harmful environment at home, but would also mean schools had failed to foster “safe” learning environments.
“He [Gov. Murphy] thinks we’re monsters. He thinks that we would torture our kids. We would never torture our kids. We were trying to get the masks off for two years because he tortures our kids and now that he is losing control of his school boards because we’re getting people elected, fighting the NJEA (New Jersey Education Association), getting our parents in to make these kinds of changes… He’s going to use the A.G. to make sure that we can’t do these things.
“He has waged war on parents and children for three years,” Stouffer later added.
Officials’ lawsuit failed against the district additionally allege the policies violate existing state guidance on transgender students, which states parents cannot be informed of what their child does in school.
When reached for comment on the lawsuit, the Attorney General’s office directed Fox News Digital to a press release published last week that criticized district policies as “unlawful.”
“As the complaints assert, the policies enacted by the Middletown, Marlboro, and Manalapan-Englishtown Boards expressly target transgender, gender non-conforming, and gender non-binary students by singling them out for differential treatment, requiring parental notification for those students but not their peers,” the release read in part.
Platkin, per the press release said, “In New Jersey, we will not tolerate any action by schools that threatens the health and safety of our young people. Without question, the discriminatory policies passed by these Boards of Education, if allowed to go into effect, will harm our kids and pose severe risk to their safety,” adding, “Simply put, these policies violate our laws, and we will not relent in protecting our LGBTQ+ community—especially our children—from discrimination.”
