Turning Point USA founder and CEO Charlie Kirk confronted Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom over a state law prohibiting any requirement for schools to notify parents about changes to their child’s gender identity.
Newsom signed the “Support Academic Futures and Educators for Today’s Youth Act (SAFETY) Act” in July 2024, allowing school administrators to keep any changes to a child’s gender identity or sexual orientation undisclosed from their families. As Kirk confronted Newsom on the legislation, the governor argued that the law simply states that parents cannot get fired if they withhold information about a child’s identity from their parents or guardians during an interview released Thursday on his new podcast, “This Is Gavin Newsom.”
“You signed a law where school districts can’t even tell parents if their kids are trans,” Kirk said, which Newsom said is “factually untrue.”
“They can, they just can’t get fired for not doing that and it wasn’t just trans,” Newsom said. “The law was explicit, [it] said ‘you can’t be fired for not snitching on a kid’ not just for being trans, for being gay … The teachers themselves have the right, the law itself says they can [tell parents], we’re not saying you can’t do that. We’re saying you shouldn’t be fired if you choose not to say ‘Johnny was talking about liking some other boy.’”
Kirk argued a teacher should inevitably be fired if they intentionally do not inform a child’s parents of any changes to their identity.
We had quite the chat! pic.twitter.com/XUjT2c5NXH
— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) March 4, 2025
“A teacher should of course be fired if you don’t notify a parent of what’s happening to their kid. Of course they should be terminated for that … Whose kid is it?” Kirk said.
“I want these teachers to teach. And if [they’re concerned about] the health or safety of their kid, they have a responsibility to communicate. They still can. By the way, we’re not telling these teachers that they can’t, we’re saying they won’t be fired if they don’t look around and say in the recess, ‘there were two boys, why didn’t you see that, you’re fired.’”
The Turning Point executive then told Newsom that the legislation prohibits teachers from facing any accountability for hiding significant changes about a child’s mental health from their parents. He pointed to instances where teachers were secretly “affirming” children who identified as transgender without their parents’ knowledge or consent, and argued the Democrats will lose on these issues.
“What you’re saying is there’s no way to hold [teachers] accountable … What we’re talking about is if, which happens a lot unfortunately, is if a young girl says that ‘hey, I want to transition’ and the teacher accommodates and affirms it and the parent doesn’t even know,” Kirk argued. “I have met parents like that in [California].”
The passage of the law angered many parental rights advocates, including Chino Valley Unified School District Board President Sonja Shaw, who testified in June that the law “makes lying legal and a requirement” in California schools. This same school district approved a policy in 2023 to require educators to inform parents of changes to their children’s gender identities, which was legally challenged by California Attorney General Rob Bonta in Aug. 2023.
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