California Dems Fail To Rebrand As Party That Protects Children

While Governor Gavin Newsom touts his new social media law as a landmark achievement for protecting kids online, California Democrats’ recent voting record indicates that safeguarding kids is not a priority for Newsom or his party.  

Senate Bill 976 (introduced by Democrat Nancy Skinner), which Newsom signed into law last month, bans online platforms from “knowingly providing” addictive content feeds to minors “without parental consent.” In a statement accompanying the bill signing, Newsom bragged, “With this bill, California is helping protect children and teenagers from purposely designed features that feed these destructive habits. I thank Senator Skinner for advancing this important legislation that puts children’s well-being first.” 

While Newsom’s backing of the bill made headlines, the Democrat majority has refused to consider numerous other child protection proposals this legislative session and has even pushed through one bill that puts many young people at risk. The party has not earned its rhetoric as a champion of children’s well-being.

A notable example is SB 1435 (introduced by Republican Ochoa Bogh), which sought to support the removal of obscene materials from K-8 classrooms and school libraries by aligning California law with federal broadcasting standards. This innocuous bill to make educational environments safer for young students failed to pass beyond the Senate Education Committee. Three Democrat senators opposed the measure, dismissing it as a “book-banning” bill.

Yet if materials are deemed inappropriate for a general audience under federal broadcasting rules, it stands to reason they should also be considered inappropriate for children, especially in K-8 educational settings. Another bill, AB 3080 (introduced by Republican Juan Alanis), proposed to strengthen online protections for children by requiring businesses that offer products or services that are illegal for minors, such as pornography, to verify users’ age with government-issued ID.

Despite passing unanimously in the Assembly and facing no opposition in the Senate Judiciary Committee, AB 3080 was halted by the Senate Appropriations Committee chaired by Democrat Sen. Anna Caballero, who effectively killed the bill by leaving it on the committee’s suspense file. 

But Democrats’ greatest hypocrisy by far is claiming to care about “parental consent” when it comes to online content as they work overtime to kill the parental notification policies enacted by local school boards. These policies arose after a growing number of parents reported that schools were lying to them about their children changing their names and gender at school.

One particularly egregious example occurred in the Newport-Mesa school district in Orange County, where last year a parental rights group “obtained hundreds of pages of emails and documents” showing that the district was involved in the social gender “transitioning” of 23 students — “eight of them elementary school age” — without informed parental consent from 2020 to 2022. 

In response to incidents like these, over a dozen California school districts passed policies requiring schools to notify parents of any changes to their child’s official or unofficial records. California Attorney General Rob Bonta has targeted school districts that adopted these policies, most notably suing Chino Valley Unified for implementing the first parental notification policy. Litigation on this issue continues in several cases in both state and federal court.

Rather than waiting for ongoing litigation to resolve, Democrats in the legislature pushed through AB 1955 (introduced by Democrat Chris Ward), which bans districts from adopting parental notification policies, and ostensibly allows school districts to create and maintain separate — and often secret — files or “unofficial records” for students, intentionally concealing information from parents. 

But AB 1955 defies federal law that requires parents to have complete access to their children’s school records at all times. Legal challenges to the new law are expected before it goes into effect in January.

How can Democrats champion parental involvement for online platforms but condemn it when it comes to something as life-altering as gender “transitioning?”

Will O’Neill, mayor of Newport Beach, captured the absurdity of the Democrats’ stance perfectly: “In other words, [Attorney General Rob Bonta] wants a kid to get parent consent before joining Instagram, but not before changing gender.”

California voters should recognize the gap between the Democrats’ rhetoric on the new social media law and their actions when it comes to protecting children. They want to be seen as staunch champions of children’s safety. But this image crumbles under the slightest scrutiny.

Andrew Davenport is a policy and research associate with the California Policy Center and a Young Voices contributor.