"The state has demonstrated a reasonable probability of success on its claim that the Amended Policies, if implemented, will have a disparate impact on transgender, gender nonconforming, and nonbinary youth,” Monmouth County Judge David Bauman wrote in issuing a preliminary injunction.
However, he noted that he was “not rendering any final judgments or determinations as to the merits of either the State or the School Boards’ claims,” pending the outcome of a larger, civil rights case related to the issue.
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[New Jersey Attorney General Matthew] Platkin has argued that the districts’ policies pose a serious risk to children’s safety by outing transgender, non-binary and gender non-conforming students.
“As the Superior Court correctly found, and as we have argued from the start, it is likely that these new policies violate the rights of our most vulnerable residents by discriminating against them on the basis of gender identity or expression,” Platikin said in a statement.
The Attorney General added that the state is not seeking to target parental rights, but to reinstate previously existing school policies that had “protected the rights of transgender students and permitted schools to inform parents about their children based on individualized and non-discriminatory assessments of a particular child’s needs and circumstances.”
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Gov. Phil Murphy — who lives within the confines of the Middletown Township school district — blasted the policies as illegal and simply harmful.
The governor, whose children have already graduated from high school, called the policies the result of a “culture war.”
“But let’s not violate the constitutional and civil rights of precious young folks in many cases, who are coming to grips with life as they grow up and grow older, let’s be respectful of that,” Murphy said.