Recall Campaign Against School Board Trustee Over ‘Social Contagion’ Comment on Transgenderism Moves Forward

An LGBT flag at an school board meeting in a file photo. John Fredricks/The Epoch Times

A campaign to recall a school board trustee in Woodland, California—about 15 miles northwest of Sacramento—over her controversial comments about the LGBT community says they have gathered enough signatures to trigger a recall election in March of next year.

On Nov. 3, the recall campaign announced on social media that it submitted 1,349 signatures—well over the required amount to trigger an election for the Woodland Joint Unified High School District trustee.

Now, the Yolo County Election Office has 30 days to verify the signatures.

The recall effort was launched over the summer after Trustee Emily MacDonald spoke about the transgender community during a meeting on June 15, when the board unanimously voted to officially recognize June as “LGBTQI+ Pride Month.”

Ms. MacDonald said the amount of youth identifying as transgender has “more than doubled” in recent years, indicating that the rapid increase in transgender identification could be a social trend among teens.

“Transgender identification has more than doubled in five years, particularly among teenage girls, who were one of the least likely demographics to identify as transgender until the last few years when it became the largest demographic to do so by a large margin,” Ms. MacDonald said. “The increase has been so massive that it defies any reasonable explanation at least some degree of social contagion.”

She went on, “We must act with great caution in order to protect the increasing numbers of children who are experiencing transgender procedures as a result of social contagion without sacrificing the tiny number of individuals who would identify as transgender even without social contagion, education campaigns, and the social cache attached to a transgender identity in the present.”

During public comment period at the next June 28 board meeting, resident Laura Brubaker announced she would move forward with a campaign to recall Ms. MacDonald, if she refused to resign, according to a press release on the campaign’s website.

“The school district and school board has repeatedly affirmed their commitment to create a ‘safe, supportive, and inclusive environment’ for all of Woodland’s students. Trustee MacDonald’s divisive comments undermined this critical function of the school board. These statements about transgender persons were ignorant, dehumanizing, and created a greater risk of physical danger for Woodland’s LGBTQIA+ students,” the campaign stated in their notice of intent to recall.

The group needed to gather 1,078 signatures from the district’s Trustee Area 2 by Nov. 4 to trigger a recall election.

Ms. MacDonald was not immediately available for comment on the matter.