Overview

The California Healthy Youth Act (AB 329), which took effect January 1, 2016, requires school districts to provide students with comprehensive sexual health and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) prevention education at least once in middle school and once in high school. Instruction and materials must be medically accurate, age-appropriate and inclusive of all students. The law requires that instruction and materials must encourage students to communicate with parents, guardians, or other trusted adults about human sexuality.

All instruction must be age‐appropriate, medically accurate, and appropriate for students with disabilities, students who are English language learners, and for students of all races, ethnic and cultural backgrounds, genders, and sexual orientations. Instruction may not promote religious doctrine. Instruction must affirmatively recognize different sexual orientations, and be inclusive of same‐sex relationships when providing examples of couples or relationships. It must also teach about gender, gender expression, gender identity, and explore the harm of negative gender stereotypes. Comprehensive sexual health education must encourage students to communicate with their parents or other trusted adults, and must provide students with the knowledge and skills to develop healthy relationships and make healthy decisions about sexuality.

Beginning in grade 7, instruction must include information about the safety and effectiveness of all FDA‐approved methods of preventing pregnancy and transmission of HIV and other sexually transmitted infections (including condoms, contraceptives, and antiretroviral treatment) and abstinence. It must also include information about HIV, pregnancy, sexual harassment, sexual assault, healthy relationships, and sex trafficking, as well as local resources for accessing care and students’ rights to access care.

Instruction is medically accurate if it is verified or supported by proper scientific research, published in peer-reviewed journals as appropriate, and recognized as accurate and objective by agencies with expertise in the field, such as the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the American Public Health Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.

Parents or guardians must be notified that their student will receive sexual health and HIV prevention education and be allowed to view the materials prior to instruction. Parents or guardians may remove their student from the instruction by submitting a request in writing.