finally tonight school districts that have been sued by the state for fighting a policy known as 5756 that covers transgender rights had their day in court attorneys for the school boards presented oral arguments today against the State Attorney General's office in their effort to repeal the policy that prevents District staff from notifying parents if a student identifies as transgender in school as Raven Santana reports the hours long arguments were a highly anticipated moment of the parental rights debate why is it that we have to consent or allow our children to be taught things with which are against our moral or religious beliefs that's not acceptable Hanover Township resident and former board member Barbara Emes is one of a group of supporters that showed up to a hearing at the Essex County veterans courthouse in Newark to support her District ditching policy 5756 which protects the rights of transgender students we are not teaching children this is not about math it's not about learning to read it is indoctrination it's about what to think and what to think about your god-given body that you could be born in the wrong body three judges heard the oral arguments from attorneys of four different districts Handover Township Middletown Manalapan English town and Marboro who were sued by the state last year after amending policy 5756 to require parents be notified by staff when their children requested among other things to be called by new pronouns be identified differently or changed their names the underlying legal issue here is Parental notification but when it impacts a student record a formal mandated student record that we are required to keep then that triggers parental notification and again we only allow that for some reason here with transgender students I don't think we can function as a school district in this state if the student by the way district is K through 8th so we're dealing with students under this policy would be 7 years old 8 years old 9 years old and still be still have the last word as to whether you tell my parents or not about it and that's the problem and that's the issue that we really think needs to be addressed as part of this initial conjunction attorneys from those school districts faced off against the New Jersey attorney general's office after attorney general Matt Platkin filed a civil rights complaint against the districts arguing their policy Amendment violated the state's law against discrimination his office is fighting to prevent the policies from being modified until administrative proceedings take place before the New Jersey Division on civil rights they argue that these policies could protect transgender students who do not feel safe being outed to their parents or even at school if the state had an affirmative Duty uh to notify the state would by constitutional fiat be mandated to butt into the family relationship deprive the student of the autonomy of their decision about whether to come out to parents when to come out to parents and how right it also I mean we're assuming that parents want this but parents may not want the state to be coming in and having these conversations they may want to tackle these uh issues on their own terms and and and and the Constitutional requirement would would frustrate that as well this policy actually incorporates and say that any sort of exposures must be made the thing about the original policies that I just don't want to get lost here is they are quite flexible um it's a student center approach and it also requires the school to inform the student at the risk of inverted disclosure there's no promise here that this information will not make it out to the parents especially if the student is very publicly transitioning and for example joining a sports team um or a club that is publicly visible are over 600 plus school districts in the state of New Jersey and only a handful have tried reversing these policies so what we know is that every day that these policies exist in hundreds of New Jersey school districts everything is okay the the world is not un fire there was no ruling or decision made at the completion of the oral arguments but the judges did say they will issue a written opinion quote in due course for NJ Spotlight news I'm Raven Santana [Music]