students

In a massive blow to LGBTQIA+ rights, a federal judge has ruled that teachers can out queer and trans students to their parents.

Back in April 2023, two middle school teachers from the Escondido Union School District sued the district, the California State Board, and a handful of educational officials over a policy protecting LGBTQIA+ students.

Under the guidance in question, which has since been withdrawn, teachers and school staff were instructed to recognise a student’s gender identity changes and desired pronouns. It also prohibited disclosing students’ identities to their parents or guardians without their consent.

In the suit, the two teachers alleged that the policy violated their free speech and religious beliefs

After nearly a two-year legal battle, which included the case being converted to a class-action suit, US District Judge Roger Benitez ruled in favour of the plaintiffs on 23 December.

Under the order, employees in the California statewide education system are prohibited from “misleading the parent or guardian of a minor child in the education system about their child’s gender presentation at school.”

This includes “directly lying” to the student’s parent or guardian, preventing the parent or guardian from accessing the student’s educational records, and using “a different set of preferred pronouns/names when speaking with the parents than is being used at school.”

Shortly after Judge Benitez’s ruling, the state filed an appeal with the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

“A stay pending appeal – and at a minimum a brief stay to seek relief from the Court of Appeals – is warranted in this case,” the state wrote in the request.

“The Court has issued a statewide injunction that abruptly enjoins State Defendants from enforcing long-standing state laws that protect vulnerable transgender and gender nonconforming students.

“If the Orders are allowed to stay in effect before the Court of Appeals has a chance to review them, they would irrevocably alter the status quo and will create chaos and confusion among students, parents, teachers, and staff at California’s public schools.”

At the start of the month, the appeals court granted the state a short-term administrative stay of ruling, per Education Week.

The recent development comes more than a year after California Governor Gavin Newsom signed the LGBTQIA+ inclusive SAFETY Act into law, which stops school districts from requiring staff to share information about a student’s sexual orientation or gender identity to parents.

It also protects teachers and other school employees from retaliation, like being fired, if they choose not to out a student’s sexuality or gender identity to parents.

Over the last few days, LGBTQIA+ advocates and organisations have called out Judge Benitez’s rulling.

Christine Parker, senior staff attorney with the Gender, Sexuality, and Reproductive Justice Project at the ACLU Foundation of Southern California, said: “This decision denies the realities the California Legislature recognised when it adopted the SAFETY Act last year, and the Student Success and Opportunity Act back in 2013, to help ensure all students feel safe and respected at school, even if they are not ready or able to be out at home or are navigating a less-than-supportive family dynamic.

“A culture of outing harms everyone—students, families, and school staff alike—by removing opportunities to build trust. LGBTQ+ students deserve to decide on their own terms if, when, and how to come out, and to be able to be themselves at school.”

The California Legislative LGBTQ Caucus echoed similar sentiments in a statement posted to their website.

“The California Legislative LGBTQ Caucus strongly condemns the recent ruling by Judge Benitez in Mirabelli v. Olson. While the decision formally addresses a narrow Escondido Union School District policy, it deliberately injects confusion into the public understanding of the SAFETY Act (AB 1955) and signals an alarming willingness to undermine long-standing constitutional rights to privacy and nondiscrimination protections across California law,” the group wrote.

The UK is set to rejoin the Erasmus scheme, the BBC understands, five years after announcing that it would end its participation as part of the Brexit deal with the European Union.

The EU provides funding through the scheme for people to study, train or volunteer in other European countries for up to a year.

The UK replaced it with its own Turing scheme in 2021, which funds similar placements worldwide.

The government said it would not comment on ongoing talks.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer had suggested in May that a youth mobility scheme could be part of a new deal with the EU.

The BBC understands that UK students will be able to participate in the Erasmus scheme from 2027.

Alex Stanley, from the National Union of Students (NUS), said it was “fantastic that another generation of students will be able to be part of the Erasmus programme”, adding that it would represent “a huge win for the student movement”.

“Students have been campaigning to rejoin Erasmus from the day we left,” he said.

The Erasmus scheme was scrapped in the UK in December 2020, when the government announced its post-Brexit trade deal with the EU.

Boris Johnson, prime minister at the time, said it was a “tough decision”, but the scheme had become “extremely expensive”.

He said it would be replaced by the Turing scheme, which has operated since then.

Both schemes are open not just to university students, but also to people doing vocational courses, as well as apprentices and people training at college or school.

In 2020, the last year in which the UK participated in Erasmus, the scheme received 144m euros (£126m) of EU funding for 55,700 people to take part in Erasmus projects overall.

The UK sent out 9,900 students and trainees to other countries as part of the scheme that year, while 16,100 came the other way.

Glasgow, Bristol and Edinburgh were the three universities to send the most students, and Spain, France and Germany were the most popular countries which UK students went to.

In the 2024/25 academic year, the Turing scheme had £105m of funding, which paid for 43,200 placements, with 24,000 of those being in higher education, 12,100 in further education and 7,000 in schools.

The majority (38,000) were from England, with 2,900 from Scotland, 1,000 from Wales and 1,200 from Northern Ireland.

Ministers who introduced the Turing scheme in 2021 said it was designed to benefit more people from disadvantaged backgrounds and provide greater support for travel costs than the Erasmus scheme did.

It is not yet clear what will happen to the Turing scheme once Erasmus is reintroduced for UK students.