Another Complete Useless Ballot Initiative

Here we go again, in California another ballot initiative that will get overturned in the courts.

State OKs anti-trans signature effort

Bay Area Reporter

Published 08/29/2013

by Seth Hemmelgarn

Anti-trans activists received the go-ahead to gather more than 500,000 signatures in their efforts to undo a new California law designed to support transgender students.

Secretary of State Debra Bowen announced Monday, August 26 that Karen England, executive director of the Capitol Resource Institute and its affiliated Capitol Resource Family Impact, and others have until November 10 to submit at least 504,760 valid signatures to put their attempt to overturn Assembly Bill 1266 on the state ballot next year.

AB 1266, which Governor Jerry Brown signed into law August 12, aims to make sure that transgender youth can fully participate in all school activities, sports teams, programs, and facilities that match their gender identity.

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Turner added that AB 1266 is "a clarification and codification of existing non-discrimination requirements that already prohibit schools" from treating transgender boys different from other boys, and from treating transgender girls different from other girls.

"Even if they were successful in repealing AB 1266, that non-discrimination principle would still be a part of both California and federal non-discrimination law," she said.

So even if they did get enough signatures and even if they did get enough votes to repeal AB 1266 the schools will still have to integrate the schools for trans-students. It doesn’t make any sense to put this on the ballot, but then again who ever said that the rightwing conservatives had any sense.

This past spring under an agreement with the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights and the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, the Arcadia Unified School District in Arcadia, California agreed to integrate the school system for transgender students. Both the DofED and the DOJ believe that discriminate against trans-students violate Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 and Title IV of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 so the ballot initiative would be totally useless.