Who, you might ask, is primarily responsible for their child? This question, once so simple, is at the nexus of progressive activism when it comes to the division of responsibility between a public school and parents. That question has now been answered, not as a matter of philosophy, but as a matter of law, in California.

The “SAFETY Act,” AB 1955, signed by California Democratic governor Gavin Newsom, legally forbids schools from adopting any policy that would force them to disclose “any information related to a pupil’s sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression to any other person without the pupil’s consent.” Schools may not, as a matter of policy, inform parents of a child’s new gender identity unless the child volunteers her approval. The law also prohibits schools from punishing any school employee found to have “supported a pupil” hurtling down a path toward risky and irreversible hormones and surgeries.

Up to now, there had been a battle being fought in the hallways of public schools as to whether the same school that would call in parents when junior uttered a forbidden word would call mom and dad if junior wanted to shower with the girls. Schools, believing they were protecting vulnerable transgender or nonbinary students from parents who were more inclined to be concerned for the welfare of their children than to react like a supportive sycophant. This law puts an end to the battle by making it unlawful for schools to craft policies requiring parental notification.

After all, when a school will indulge every childish whim, why tell the parents who will be there with their child for the rest of their lives, long after the winds of educational fashion shift and the teachers have taken their pensions?

In California, instruction in sexual orientation and gender identity has been mandatory for all public school students K–12 since the passage of the Healthy Youth Act in 2016. Because such instruction typically occurs within the required “anti-bullying curriculum” rather than the sex education curriculum, parents cannot elect that their children opt out of what is, in practice, a full-bore indoctrination into gender ideology.

When a child then predictably decides in class that she too may be nonbinary or transgender, this revelation will often trigger schools’ gender support plan, effectively a school-wide conspiracy to promote the child’s new name and gender identity without tipping off Mom and Dad. Official documents and emails and report cards are sent to parents to preserve the child’s birth name and pronouns, concealing the social transition from parents.

The issue isn’t whether children who decide they’re transgender or nonbinary should be treated respectfully, but whether public schools should be pushing the issue in the first place on students too immature to handle pretty much any aspect of their lives except to be persuaded that any difference between their self-perception and that of some stereotypical gender person means they need a new pigeonhole for their gender.

And then, once the school in its infinite wisdom has given an impressionable child reason and permission to do something that will have an  enormous impact on their lives, welfare and happiness, bend over backwards to conceal it from the child’s parents, who will be left to deal with the detritus the school walks away from but the parents cannot.

The SAFETY Act would significantly stymie, if not eliminate, this local pushback to the increasingly unpopular practice of schools playing adoptive parents with other people’s children. (Although already, the Chino Valley Unified School District has filed suit against Newsom over this act.) The plain text of the California law claims that it merely prevents schools from adopting policies that “forcibly out” trans kids—as if confused fifth-grade girls are in the same position as closeted gay adults in decades past who risked arrest and firing for being outed.

The law’s clever sponsors are typically quiet on the subject of “outing” to whom. The entire school already knows that Lily is now “Tyler.” Teachers will cheerfully share that information with each other, school mental health staff, administrators, and other students. The only ones who don’t get to know are the parents.

The rationale is that some parents will be less than fully supportive, which schools and California legislators find unacceptable. Indeed, some parents may be concerned, and some might be hostile to learning their child is transgender.

A favorite talking point of activists on the left is that with regard to sexual orientation and gender identity, schools must keep secrets with young children to protect them from transphobic and homophobic parents. Even in the most progressive of states, the claim that parents who discover that their child is transgender might abuse or kick her out is used to justify a policy that would otherwise be difficult to understand and impossible to justify.

But they are still the parents, for better or worse, and yet California has decided that teachers and politicians are better positioned to care for children than their parents. In California, this is now the law.