A Federal Appeals Court Just Blocked Newsom’s School-Secrecy Law — and Handed Parents Another Win.

In 2024, Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) signed AB 1955, the so-called SAFETY Act, making California the first state in the nation to bar school districts from requiring staff to notify parents when a student changes their name, pronouns, or gender identity at school. The message to local school boards that had passed parental-notification policies was blunt: the state, not the parent, would decide what families got to know.

On June 18, 2026, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit said the Constitution sees it the other way. A three-judge panel granted a preliminary injunction blocking enforcement of key provisions of AB 1955 — Sections 5 and 6 — against a group of California parents who had sued, finding they were “very likely” to win and that the law “forbids the mandatory policies that the Constitution requires.”

It is a narrow, preliminary ruling — it shields the named parent-plaintiffs while the case proceeds, not the entire state. But it is the second straight courtroom loss for Newsom’s signature secrecy law in four months, after the Supreme Court’s March 2026 emergency order in a companion case. As the New York Post put it: parents win, Gavin Newsom loses — again.

• June 18, 2026 — the Ninth Circuit granted a preliminary injunction blocking Sections 5 and 6 of AB 1955 against the parent-plaintiffs · Source: Washington Examiner; America First Legal
• 7 parents — the parent-plaintiffs the panel found likely have standing and are likely to prevail against the secrecy law · Source: America First Legal; California Family Council
• 6–3 — the Supreme Court vote in March 2026 (Mirabelli v. Bonta) that reset the legal landscape and prompted the panel to reverse course · Source: SCOTUSblog; Fox News
• July 15, 2024 — the date Newsom signed AB 1955, the SAFETY Act; it took effect Jan. 1, 2025 · Source: EdSource; NPR
• 1st state — California was the first in the nation to bar districts from requiring staff to notify parents of a student's gender change · Source: NPR; EdSource

The Ninth Circuit panel — Judges Daniel Collins and Kenneth Lee (both Trump appointees) and Lucy Koh (a Biden appointee) — granted a preliminary injunction in City of Huntington Beach v. Newsom, shielding the parent-plaintiffs from enforcement of Sections 5 and 6 of AB 1955. The court held the parents “very likely have standing because they are objects of the challenged exclusion policies,” and that the law “likely deprives them of their constitutional rights.” In the panel’s words, AB 1955 “forbids the mandatory policies that the Constitution requires.”

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“Parents — not the State — have primary authority with respect to the upbringing and education of children, including the right not to be shut out of participation in decisions regarding their children's mental health.”

U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit — June 18, 2026 preliminary injunction

AB 1955 — the Support Academic Futures and Equality for Today’s Youth Act — did not merely permit schools to keep gender information from parents. It barred districts from adopting or enforcing any policy that required staff to tell parents when a student asked to use a different name or pronouns, identified as a different gender than their records show, or changed gender expression at school. It also shielded employees from discipline for refusing to notify. The bill was Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA)’s direct answer to a wave of conservative-led school boards — Chino Valley among them — that had passed notification rules in 2023.

The striking part of the June ruling is that the same Ninth Circuit panel had twice deniedthis exact relief before. What changed was the Supreme Court. In Mirabelli v. Bonta, decided 6–3 on the emergency docket on March 2, 2026, the justices held that California’s school gender-secrecy policies likely violate parents’ rights under the Free Exercise Clause and the Due Process Clause, leaning on the 2025 decision in Mahmoud v. Taylor. Reconsidering its prior denials “in light of” that ruling, the panel found the parents now satisfied every requirement for emergency relief.

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The politics of the loss are as telling as the law. Critics note that Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) has struggled to defend the policy on its merits — when pressed on why parents shouldn’t have the right to know, he has tended to wave the question off as a non-issue for voters, even as polling consistently shows broad support for parental notification. The New York Post’s framing was simple: parents sign permission slips for a field trip to the museum; they certainly have a right to know if their child is being counseled to change gender at school.

It is worth being precise. AB 1955 has not been struck down. The Ninth Circuit’s order is a preliminaryinjunction, and it protects the named parent-plaintiffs in the Huntington Beach case — it is not yet a statewide judgment voiding the law for everyone. The Supreme Court’s March order in Mirabelliwas likewise an emergency ruling on likelihood of success, not a final merits decision. The cases now proceed toward full adjudication. What the rulings have established is the legal trajectory: courts at both levels have found that the secrecy mandate likely collides with parents’ constitutional rights.

The fight over AB 1955 was always about a single question: when a child changes gender at school, does the state get to keep that from the child’s own parents? California, under Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA), answered yes and wrote it into law. Two federal courts have now said the Constitution leans the other way — that parents, not the State, hold primary authority over their children. The injunctions are preliminary and the litigation isn’t over, so we will be careful not to overstate it. But the direction is unmistakable, and for the parents who sued, the courtroom scoreboard reads the same both times: a win. We’ll track the merits rulings and update as the cases resolve.

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Last updated June 22, 2026