Chino Valley Unified Moves to Dissolve Court Injunction Following SCOTUS Mirabelli Ruling on Parental Rights
SAN BERNARDINO, CA — The Chino Valley Unified School District (CVUSD) has filed a motion to dissolve a 2024 court-ordered injunction that blocked the district’s parental notification policy. Following the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision in Mirabelli v. Bonta, Chino Valley is going back to court to remove the original injunction against it.
In March, the Supreme Court held in Mirabelli that parents have a constitutional right to be informed when their child expresses gender incongruence in the public school setting and requires schools to provide such notice.
Attorneys with the California Justice Center and Advocates for Faith & Freedom, who are representing the district, are requesting the state court bring its ruling into alignment with Mirabelli.
“With the Supreme Court’s decisive ruling in Mirabelli affirming parents’ constitutional rights, our district is asking the state court to dissolve the injunction against our original parental notification policy, the first in California,” said Sonja Shaw, president of the Chino Valley Unified school board. “Gov. Newsom and Attorney General Bonta weaponized the legal system against us and against California parents. We believe this is the hill worth standing on to protect parents’ constitutional rights.”
CVUSD’s parental notification policy, adopted in July 2023, required school personnel to notify parents if a student requested to be treated as a gender different from their biological sex, including making changes to their names, pronouns, or participation in sex-segregated programs.
In August 2023, California Attorney General Rob Bonta sued CVUSD in the Superior Court of San Bernardino to stop the district’s policy from going into effect. Although CVUSD prevailed on other aspects of the case, on October 3, 2024, Superior Court Judge Michael Sachs issued a permanent injunction blocking the policy based on state law interpretations.
However, in December, 2025, a federal judge in the Mirabelli case issued a permanent injunction against Bonta and state education officials, halting California’s state-sanctioned “Parental Exclusion Policies” that order teachers to hide a child’s gender transition at school from their parents.
The district’s filing warns that continued enforcement of Judge Sachs’ injunction is legally untenable.
“Chino Valley is now in the impossible position of being subject to two conflicting permanent injunctions—one from the Mirabelli case requiring Chino to notify parents if their child asks to change their gender, and Judge Sachs’ injunction that prohibits that same policy,” said Emily Rae, President of the California Justice Center. “We filed this motion to ensure Chino has clarity moving forward and to stand up for the rights of parents.”
CVUSD argues its parental notification policy is materially indistinguishable from the policy addressed in Mirabelli, where the Supreme Court affirmed parents have a fundamental right to direct the upbringing, education, and mental health decisions concerning their children.
“This is a defining moment for parental rights in America,” said Robert Tyler, President and Chief Counsel of Advocates for Faith & Freedom. “The Supreme Court has made clear that parents are not to be sidelined in the most important decisions affecting their children. Government policies that hide critical information from parents are not only wrong, they are unconstitutional. Courts must now bring their rulings into alignment with that truth.”
Shaw said the Chino Valley school board has not wavered in its position throughout the legal battle.
“Parents have a fundamental role in their children’s education, and that principle does not change under pressure or litigation,” Shaw said. “The precedent is now set, the fight is over, and it’s time to lift that injunction once and for all.”