New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin has filed three more civil rights lawsuits against municipal school districts for adopting policies that require schools to notify parents about any changes in their children’s gender identity at school.
The new filings, against school districts in Manalapan-Englishtown, Middletown, and Marlboro, follow a complaint filed by Platkin last month against the Hanover Township School Board for adopting a new policy that he said broke state discrimination laws by requiring schools to “out” children to their parents.
Shawn Hyland, director of advocacy for the New Jersey Family Policy Center, said Platkin appears to be trying to set a legal precedent that parents have no rights over their own children when it comes to a government-imposed agenda to reassign the biological genders of minors.
“I think it’s a major attempt to make children a property of the state,” Hyland told The Epoch Times. “It’s at the very least a power grab for the state to take over the decision-making of school boards.”
Pacific Justice Institute attorney Karyn White, who’s representing a group of New Jersey parents and organizations in a court petition against Platkin in the Hanover Township suit, agrees.
She told the Epoch Times that she believes the case will end up at the Supreme Court, where it may very well set national legal precedence in the argument that “liberal government officials” are making that minors have a right to privacy from their parents.
“The New Jersey Attorney General is essentially declaring it illegal for a school to tell a parent if their child is changing gender identities at school,” White said.
The court petition she filed on behalf of the Hanover Township group seeks to move the civil rights lawsuit he filed against the local school board to Superior Court, where the proceedings would be open to the public.
Platkin filed the complaint against Hanover Township with the New Jersey Division on Civil Rights (DCR) after winning an injunction against the implementation of the new parental notification policy in Superior Court.
Unlike court cases, any proceedings relevant to civil rights complaints filed with the attorney general’s office are confidential.
While White said it’s legal for Platkin to file civil rights complaints with his own office, she said that in this case, it isn’t very ethical.
“Parents deserve transparency when a powerful official like an attorney general is looking to take their rights away,” she said.
Platkin also filed his civil rights complaints against the other school with the DCR.
Platkin, who wrote in a 2022 Twitter post that he married his husband nine years ago in upstate New York because “gay marriage was illegal in his home state of New Jersey,” declined to speak to The Epoch Times about the civil rights suits and instead emailed links to his office’s web page for press releases.
In a June 28 post on Twitter about the 1969 police raid of a gay club in New York City, known as the Stonewall Riots, Platkin posted on Twitter, “We honor the strength and the courage of all those who galvanized the modern-day LGBTQ+ movement. 54 years later, we carry the baton forward to continue down the path towards equality and inclusion.”
There are no statements on his state website about the civil rights lawsuits he has filed against the four New Jersey schools.
There’s one from Jan. 26, titled “AG Platkin and Acting Commissioner Allen-McMillan Announce Joint Statement from Division on Civil Rights and Department of Education on School-Based Anti-Bias Initiatives and the Law Against Discrimination.”
Angelica Allen-McMillan is the acting commissioner of the state’s Department of Education.
In the statement, Platkin and Allen-McMillan make reference to the New Jersey Law Against Discrimination (LAD) as the law that protects against “historically excluded communities.” They identify LGBT as one of those communities.
“In New Jersey, the law is clear. The LAD prohibits schools from adopting policies or practices that discriminate against students or staff based on their race, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, or other protected characteristics, whether or not motivated by discriminatory intent,” they wrote.
“The LAD also prohibits policies or practices that create a hostile environment based on any protected characteristic.”
Hyland said parental notification policies have nothing to do with the state’s anti-discrimination laws because they’re designed to protect adults against things such as housing and job discrimination.
“Not seeing where children fall into this protected class,” he said.
Platkin hasn’t publicly cited the specific law that he says the schools have violated.
Under Middletown and Manalapan-Englishtown’s new policies, notification to parents is required if the child asks to be referred to by gender pronouns that are different from their biological gender.
Marlboro’s policy calls for notification to parents when a student changes their gender identity and expression.
Hanover Township’s policy calls for a broader notice to parents—triggered by any sexual orientation activity. The school included the factor among some 30 other reasons that schools should notify parents.
They include drug and alcohol use, disclosed eating disorders, truancy, depression, fatigue, anti-social behaviors, bullying issues, truancy, and gang affiliation.
Platkin only objected to the notification regarding the sexual orientation activity of children.
Gregory Quinlan, president of the Center for Garden State Families, said Platkin is using his power to deliberately break the cardinal rule that “we have forever taught kids,” that “it is wrong when adults encourage children from keeping secret from their parents.”
“If that’s not child grooming, then I don’t know what is,” Quinlan told The Epoch Times.
On June 28, the Colts Neck school board in New Jersey postponed a vote on a parental notification policy that’s similar to those that are now the subject of Platkin’s civil rights lawsuits.
Parents spoke for and against the policy. One parent said a child “who believes in the Tooth Fairy, Santa Claus, and The Easter Bunny does not have the emotional or intellectual maturity to decide what their parents should and should not know.”
A parent opposed to the policy said parents who don’t have a trans kid should “keep your ill-conceived opinions to yourself because they are hurting our children.”
