Anti-Trans Inroads in NJ School Boards Pose Threat to Student Protections
Board of education candidates elected with the backing of anti-trans groups have changed the political landscape in one New Jersey county, a new data analysis shows. Students are at risk.
Marlboro Township School Board meeting of June 6, 2023 where the board passed "forced outing" policy leading to court-ruled injunctions. photo by Say Gay NJ
by Lana Leonard and Cole Zaccaro
Board of Education candidates endorsed by anti-transgender groups won 49 of 148 seats up for election in 2024 in Monmouth County, N.J., a new data analysis shows, posing a threat to existing transgender protections and offering a wider window into how such groups push harmful policies at the local level.
New Jersey Project, a state group that brands LGBTQ+ inclusion and trans protections as “tyranny,” had led the election push, endorsing 66 school board candidates in Monmouth County. Nearly three-fourths of those candidates won, ultimately taking control of one-third of all school board seats on the ballot in Monmouth County last November.
The group aligns itself with Moms for Liberty, a prominent national anti-LGBTQ+ organization that has mounted a yearslong assault on inclusive policies for trans students. New Jersey Project and Moms for Liberty chapters alike have targeted the state’s Transgender Student Guidance for School Districts, or Policy 5756.
DATA SUMMARY
Of 66 candidates endorsed by New Jersey Project, voters elected 74% to local school boards in Monmoth County.
These candidates collectively won a third of the 148 school board seats on the ballot in Monmouth.
Pre-election, nine school boards in Monmouth (19%) had already abolished or weakened protections for transgender students
Post-election, another 18 school boards in the county (38%) may be at risk of abolishing trans protections.
Policy 5756 defines protections for trans students, including the right to use affirming names and pronouns, to use the facilities that correspond to their gender identity, and to explore their gender identity with school support. Parental involvement is at the student’s discretion.
A law signed in 2017 by Gov. Chris Christie directed the state Department of Education to develop these guidelines for trans students, which most local districts adopted as Policy 5756. These local policies have come under attack by New Jersey Project and Moms for Liberty, both of which were identified last year as “anti-government” groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Nine school boards in Monmouth County, where the two anti-trans groups have a strong presence, had abolished or weakened Policy 5756 even before the election, and three others omitted it from their websites.
Following New Jersey Project’s success in the 2024 election, our data analysis shows,18 additional school districts in Monmouth County could face pressure to abolish transgender protections. Our analysis cross-referenced the list of New Jersey Project-endorsed candidates against November 2024 election results in Monmouth County to determine which districts might see challenges to Policy 5756 protections.
The trends in New Jersey have nationwide implications. Moms for Liberty, which has chapters across the country, has loudly declared its intention to elect anti-trans candidates to school boards nationwide. Its aggressive tactics have been questioned repeatedly: Since its founding in 2021, Moms for Liberty supporters have swarmed public meetings, spread disinformation and harassed queer people in New Jersey and throughout the country.
Ashurmalik E. Ocasio, 37, a trans man residing in Monmouth County, began to understand the tactics of anti-trans groups in 2023. Ocasio is the transgender empowerment coach at the nonprofit Prevention Resource Network, where he helps people find gender-affirming resources, from healthcare to haircuts.
One day, Ocasio found a photograph of himself and his then-partner on a “parental rights” social media page run by the organizers of New Jersey Project. Alongside his photo was a caption deeming them “groomers” who “are celebrating removing parental rights.”
The screenshot was initially laughable, Ocasio told us in an interview, then he realized the harm it represented. “For these people to take my image and use it to further their own political gain, that's where I became concerned,” Ocasio said. “I’ve never felt like this before. It's like people really just don’t like us and don't want us to live.”
Young trans people “do not understand why any of this has happened to them,” Ocasio said. “They are individuals, each and every one. They have their own needs, they have their own wants, they have their own desires, they have their own dreams."
Challenges to Policy 5756 emerged in 2023, most notably, when three school boards in Monmouth County introduced “parental notification” amendments that would effectively out students without their consent. New Jersey Attorney General Matthew J. Platkin immediately contested moves and, just this month, a New Jersey court upheld the state’s injunctions against “forced outing” amendments.
But Policy 5756 itself is still vulnerable because its adoption by local districts is not mandatory. And Moms for Liberty is training its sights on it again. A group leader from Bergen County posted on Instagram in January that its goal was to get Policy 5756 “out of every school” in New Jersey.
Aruna Rao, the founder of the LGBTQIA+ group Desi Rainbow, encountered this anti-trans wave last fall in her home in Edison, a Middlesex County township just north of Monmouth. Edison’s school board ultimately voted 6-3, as the Gothamist reported, to affirm that students can identify as trans in school without being forced to come out before they are ready.
Rao celebrated the victory with other members of the community. “I cannot believe that just regular parents in any school district are comfortable with having children singled out and penalized just for their gender identity,” she said.
Rao started organizing in the South Asian community of Edison when her child came out as queer in high school, then as trans in college. She told herself: “I cannot be the only South Asian mother of a queer and trans child, right?”
That is how Desi Rainbow began. She knew she needed to organize and love her child by building educational awareness and support groups.
But politics can vary by county.
“I've always been very encouraged by the level of involvement in local activism in Middlesex,” Rao said. “I feel like this is a place where it's been safe. It's been safe for trans people, and it's been safe for trans communities, and I'm really hoping that it remains that way.”
Monmouth County is a different story. Of the 49 New Jersey Project-endorsed candidates who won their seats, more than half ran unopposed. Parental involvement from those dedicated to protecting the rights and safety of all students regardless of gender identity could turn the tide in future election cycles there.
“I'm very proud of what's been done in the recent past in terms of, real, concrete support for the trans community in New Jersey,” Rao said. But, Rao added, “it's all fragile, depending on who's in the political sphere at any point.”
For the last two years, Lana Leonard has reported on New Jersey school board politics and the implications for Policy 5756 for Out in Jersey Magazine. Leonard is also the associate of education & advocacy at the GLAAD Media Institute, the organization’s training, research and consulting division. Read more about their work here.
A gender non-conforming activist and Monmouth County resident, Cole Zaccaro has attended and spoken at multiple school board meetings throughout Monmouth County in defense of Policy 5756. They have tracked local attacks on Policy 5756 since 2023 and continue to monitor ongoing threats to transgender student protections in Monmouth County.