Alaska AG issues opinion, letters regarding parental notification, indecent material to minors, to school districts and libraries

Last week, in response to questions and concerns from residents here in the Matanuska Borough and across Alaska, the state’s Attorney General, Treg Taylor, addressed a number of topics related to education.

In a press release, AG Taylor said that to assist the Department of Education and Early Development (DEED) on the scope of the parental notification law, he issued an opinion discussing the meaning of the phrase “human reproduction and sexual matters” as it is used in AS 14.03.016.

Within the statute, he wrote, which requires schools to provide “parent notification not less than two weeks before any activity, class or program that includes content involving human reproduction or sexual matters is provided to a child,” AG Taylor said when it comes to specific questions about whether this statute requires parental notification before children are taught about gender identity, the answer is yes.

“The Alaska Supreme Court interprets statutes according to the statute’s text, purpose, and legislative history…these interpretive tools show that the statute requires parental notification before children are taught about gender identity.”

Alaska’s parental notification statute, AS 14.03.016, was passed in 2016, which mandates that school boards adopt policies to promote the involvement of parents in the school district’s education program. In AG Taylor’s analysis, he says that one way the statute achieves this goal is by requiring schools to have procedures for notifying parents “two weeks before any activity, class, or program that includes content involving human reproduction or sexual matters is provided to a child.”

AG Taylor also says that the phrase “gender identity” refers generally to “a person’s innate sense of their gender.” It is typically used “in contexts where [gender identity] is contrasted with the sex registered . . . at birth,” and according to the Ninth Circuit, a person’s sex “is typically assigned at birth based on an infant’s external genitalia.”

In his analysis, deciding whether Alaska’s parental notification statute applies to coursework about gender identity requires an interpretation of the statute using the tools of statutory interpretation used by the Alaska Supreme Court.

“The Court interprets statutes ‘according to reason, practicality, and common sense’. This involves looking at ‘the meaning of the statute’s language, its legislative history, and its purpose’.”

AG Taylor goes on to write that the text is most important, and given that, the “plainer the statutory language is, the more convincing the evidence of contrary legislative purpose or intent must be,” and the statute’s plain language supports the position that parents must receive notice before their child is taught about gender identity.

There are legal exceptions to content involving ‘human reproduction or sexual matters’ that were conveyed by the legislature that serve to reinforce the conclusion that the phrase includes ‘gender identity coursework.’ AG Taylor says that the exceptions are very limited, applying only to “sexual abuse and sexual assault awareness” training and to “dating violence and abuse.

“The purpose of the statute is to maximize parents’ ability to participate in their child’s education, which is advanced by giving notice about gender identity coursework. Under both the Alaska and United States constitution, parents have a fundamental right to raise their children,” AG Taylor writes, adding that the parental notification statute serves to promote that constitutional right by giving parents knowledge to help them make informed decisions in regards to their child’s education.

“Nearly every section of the statute empowers parents, often by giving them broad access to information about coursework; no aspect of the statute narrows the scope of parents’ access to information.”

AG Taylor also issued two letters—one to school districts and one to school districts and libraries. In the first letter, he outlines the laws on parental rights and required notification; in the second, the laws that limit the type of material that can be made available to minors.

“In light of the questions and concerns that have come up, I thought it best to inform everyone of what the law says to avoid further confusion. Whether or not there has been a violation of the law will always be a fact-specific inquiry, so these letters do not cast any blame. The purpose is simply to provide information that can help school districts and libraries comply with the law,” explained the Attorney General. “We all want the best education possible for our children, and working together we can ensure that parents, students, and teachers all have the information they need to accomplish that common goal.”

Over the past year, education has been a hot topic, with passionate arguments on both sides of issues involving books available to minors in libraries, what constitutes ‘pornographic materials,’ and laws prohibiting making indecent material available to minors.

The AG’s letter does not address book bans or the challenged book list here in the Mat-Su Borough, but instead looks to notify the recipients of several criminal laws that prohibit adults from giving children indecent materials, under certain circumstances. The Attorney General letter does not mention specific books – let alone indicate a specific book violates a criminal law. The laws cited have general applicability — they are not specific to libraries.

“We don’t want to catch anyone off guard—quite the opposite. We want to be transparent and hold ourselves as a resource to answer questions and prevent any issues from occurring.”