A public school district in Southern California has agreed to notify parents when lessons include LGBT-related material and allow them to opt their children out, settling a lawsuit brought by two Christian families after a book was read to their sons without their prior knowledge. The Encinitas Union School District reached the settlement with the families, and a federal judge in the U.S.
District Court for the Southern District of California approved the agreement and dismissed the case last week. The National Center for Law & Policy, which represented the families, said the court’s approval was required because minors were among the plaintiffs.
The settlement followed a policy change the district made in November 2025, when it dropped an appeal of an earlier court order and began giving families advance notice and opt-out rights for gender identity material in its student mentoring program.
A federal judge’s 2025 opinion in the lawsuit brought by the families over an incident at La Costa Heights Elementary School described the book My Shadow Is Pink as being about a boy who likes girls’ clothing and toys and feels out of place with his family and friends, so his shadow ends up pink instead of the usual blue.
The father in the story initially struggles with his son’s difference but eventually accepts the boy’s pink shadow as part of his “inner-most self,” the judge wrote at the time. The older students then watched a recorded reading of the book with their kindergarten partners, before being told to ask the younger children the color of their own shadow and trace their outlines on the ground in that color with chalk.
Carlos and Jenny Encinas, whose son attended the school, asked the district to notify parents in advance and give them the choice to keep their children