The Temecula Valley Unified School District, though a relatively small school system (approximately 26,000.students), has just made a huge difference in the lives of every family in the country that believes in parental choice and in preventing the promotion of the Critical Race Theory agenda.
In 2022, TVUSD chose to take on the dominant leftist politics of California through two courageous actions. They banned the teaching of Critical Race Theory (CRT) in their schools and required school staff members to notify parents immediately if any student identifies as a gender other than the one on their birth certificate. This policy is nearly identical to policies previously approved by both the Chino Valley and Murrieta Valley School Districts in California.
The reaction was as could be expected. California Attorney General Rob Bonta opened an investigation, followed by a lawsuit being served on TVUSD by the Temecula Valley Educators Association and a group of political activists. This group of activists asked for an immediate injunction against TVUSD. On Friday, February 23, a California court ruled in favor of TVUSD. The court affirmed the district’s parental notification policy as well as their policy of prohibiting the teaching of CRT.
“This is a win for commonsense, parents, and the safety of students,” said Robert Tyler, president of Advocates for Faith and Freedom (AFF), which represented TVUSD. “TVUSD is committed to providing a quality education free from political agendas and free from divisive curriculum.” Mariah Gondeiro, vice president of AFF, said: “This ruling vindicates the actions taken by the TVUSD School Board, who put the rights of parents and the safety of students over the wishes of special interest groups.”
Amanda Savage, the plaintiff’s attorney, has already vowed to appeal the ruling, which she says “puts Temecula in the same league as Texas and Florida with respect to censorship on ideological grounds.”
This process of fighting for what most of the nation’s populace believe are commonsense rights is not new to Tyler and his team at AFF. They were at the forefront of fighting for religious exemptions against vaccine mandates; represented hundreds of houses of worship (and our temple) in the fight to stay open during the pandemic; and are currently fighting the county of Santa Clara for geo-fencing a Calvary Church in San Jose and tracking their congregants’ location through their phones. AFF is a champion for all of us, and it is a blessing to call Robert Tyler a friend.
The fight for religious freedoms in the United States has become progressively more intense in the last three years, as the government has been chipping away at the Establishment Clause by catering to special interest groups that champion causes like child gender mutilation, sexual grooming of children, prohibition of public prayer, and more that are antithetical to many mainstream religious doctrines. The First Amendment is first for a reason, and Thomas Jefferson was clear on the topic. The wall between the Church and the State was not created to constrain religion, but rather to constrain the government. It protects us from the government creating laws demanding a single theology; but equally prevents the government from demanding the elimination of religious practices.
We should be grateful for the work of spiritual workers like these attorneys, and thankful for the results in this monumental case in a small town in California. May we all have the courage to defend those religious rights, through which so many of our rights are derived.
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