California law mandating gender-neutral toy aisles goes into effect Jan. 1

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By KENNETH SCHRUPP | THE CENTER SQUARE

California’s law requiring stores to include gender-neutral toy aisles goes into effect Jan. 1, with noncompliant stores to be fined $250 for their first violation and $500 for each subsequent violation, in addition to legal fees for the enforcing government attorney. 

AB 1084, passed in 2021, does not prohibit maintaining separate boys’ and girls’ sections, but does require that stores have a “gender neutral” section where toys traditionally marketed towards one gender or the other are placed together and provide a “reasonable selection.” The bill also does not specify what constitutes a “reasonable selection” or how the area is to be labeled at the “discretion of the retailer.” The law only applies to stores that are physically located in California, have a total of 500 or more employees across all California retail locations, and sell childcare items or toys. 

Stores that meet the above criteria and fail to comply can only be fined if the state attorney general or the local district or city attorney file a lawsuit against them, as there is no private right of action. Though the fines are low, the bill does authorize courts to make guilty parties pay for the government’s legal costs in pursuing the case. 

An analysis from the California Senate Judiciary Committee found the bill’s “open-ended language appears to be a deliberate choice” and noted that “well-draft [sic] legislation avoids language that is open to interpretation.” 

While the bill does not prohibit having boys’ and girls’ sections, a statement submitted by bill author Assemblymember Evan Low, D–Silicon Valley, suggests the intention of the bill was to encourage retailers to give up gendered toy sections. 

Combining boy’s and girl’s departments at retail stores with 500 or more employees into a “kids” department will most definitely make all kids feel welcomed,” wrote Low. 

Bill sponsor The Phluid Project, a business selling gender-neutral clothing and accessories, claims maintaining gendered toy sections “has the potential to cause emotional anxiety and gender dysphoria” among children, while supporting organization Equality California said, “Implying or stating that certain children’s products are only appropriate for certain genders stifles the ability of California’s youth to grow as their authentic selves, reinforces harmful gender stereotypes in the minds of people of all ages, and has measurable mental health implications.” 

Meanwhile, opposition from the Pacific Justice Institute claimed, “the author’s intent is to impose a de-gendered ideology and viewpoint on retailers” and that “parents do not need politicians’ help to pick out appropriate toys for their children.” 

40 COMMENTS

  1. All religions have their blasphemy laws. I’m starting to understand why my wife’s Christian parents wouldn’t allow her to wear pants.

  2. The last sentence, exactly. Politicians wasting time, money and abusing power acting in place of parents. Or even dictating to the kids themselves.

  3. “The Phluid Project, a business selling gender-neutral clothing and accessories, claims maintaining gendered toy sections “has the potential to cause emotional anxiety and gender dysphoria”

    Could the irony be any more in-yo-face?!? The “Phluid Project” makes money by causing emotional anxiety and gender dysphoria! 🤦‍♂️ Idiots that push this 💩 must have removed every mirror in their home to reduce the risk of seeing themselves as those they really despise..Like Karine Jean-Pierre, they also must also have surgically removed their gag reflex the day they started down their road of fatuitous perversion advocacy…

  4. Californicating the youth is catching on across the nation.
    Open your arms to a new level of education from the left.
    Louis Armstrong will want to add some new verses to his song “what a wonderful world” with “rainbows everywhere you look”.

  5. And the good news is, you don’t have to pay for the toys!
    Just hand them to your kids and walk out the door.
    It’s California! …. land of the “free”

  6. What the heck is the problem with the toy section now the way that it is? I don’t see any walls or barriers between the sections keeping any of the kids restricted to one section or the other. I just can’t believe the idiocy of the politicians.

    • I can’t believe the government can tell private business where to place items for sale in their store.
      Where are our courts?

  8. Genderless and brain dead, from the unchecked high levels of lead in the Chinese manufactured toys. Here is your evidence.

  9. What a bunch of freaks! No boy and girl section, only pushing the gender confusion farther.
    Companies need to say NO, pay the fine and thumb their noses at California.. Then promptly move out of there as a business. When there is nowhere to shop, play, and eat out, they will sink and go broke. Exactly what they deserve. Obviously, California is part of the problem, pushing this garbage. Let’s send all the gender confused to California. It’s time to start the big push back on all of this. It’s enough!

    • The immigrants who flood CA & our country to hustle money don’t care.
      They want money.
      They will still sell in CA, they will not move out.
      Unfortunately this is not a Christian nation, it is a capitalistic nation.

  10. I wonder where Leonard Mainway’s toys so popular back in the late ’70’ on T.V.’s Saturday Night Live would be placed according to this new regulation? His Bag’O line clearly was gender neutral, Bag O Rocks, Bag O Glass, Bag O rusty nails…

    • Dont think for a minute there aren’t enough members on the Anchorage Assembly that would vote in favor of and love to see these gender fluid aisles of choice in Anchorage Target Walmart full of young children wearing rainbow clothes playing with gender neutral dolls.
      They would be proud leaders celebrating their accomplishments on Assembly night at Mad Myrna’s.

    • No here too.
      The CA liberals are on the ANC assembly …. where have you been?
      Big drag queen party for the kids next week at the Soldotna library.

  13. “kids” department will most definitely make all kids feel welcomed,” wrote Low.”
    It is interesting that stores with less than 500 employees get away with NOT making kids feel welcome, how does that make sense?
    Kids don’t care. They gravitate to the toy they want regardless of where it is. This is for the snowflake parents, who have to make a statement with EVERYTHING. When one further considers that the alphabet crowd doesn’t generally procreate, it is another subtle nod to their gender-agenda and demand that sex and gender is not biology but a supposed societal construct.

    • It is easy to think this sickness is only grown in California but like nature the seeds get blown around and spread to other states. Hard to imagine they drifted all the way to Alaska.

      Take a hard look at the roots of the larger cities in Alaska and you will discover many in local government seats with well paid positions of authority that got drifted in from the land of fruits and nuts.
      Anchorage ASSembley is an example. Exactly which city did Ethan, AQD, Felix, Chris, Kameron, George, Anna, Meg and the rest of their cronies drift in from?
      Looks more like a mass migration similar to the southern US border bringing us America’s finest fruits and nuts.
      Representative Armstrong is a prime example of how quickly the rules can be bent to allow the seeds to take root same as a field of dandelions take over the unkept fields….They just keep spreading.

  15. A lot of people dislike sodomites and the sponsor of this bill definitely knows what johnson tastes like. Coincidence that many find it bothersome? I think not.

    The bigger issue? This is government dictating to private business what they’ll sell and in what manner. There’s a recipe for success for sure.

  16. I didn’t realize toy aisles had genders. I used to pick out hot wheels and WWF action figures, but I’ve always been a girl. There are barbie aisles and action figure aisles. It doesn’t take a genius to realize a kid can pick whichever toy from whichever aisle. This is another example of adults overcomplicating things and putting their weird ideas on children.

  17. When I was a kid, my mother didn’t mind me playing with six-shooter cap pistols but was a little annoyed when I used the dolls she gave me to double as Bad Guy Torture victims. We really weren’t into the gender thing when I was a kid. Boys and girls played sports together and cowboys and Indians and never thought about differences. That came later. I also don’t remember boys and girls shelves. Most of the time the best sellers were stacked together. Of course, I came from a small town, even though it was a state capitol. Whatever happened to that period of innocence that children used to have?

    • The sick puppies that are pushing this agenda do not respect children’s right to an innocent upbringing.
      They feel it is their right to send all children down their path of sexual deviance so they can claim more victims before they are able to defend themselves.

  19. Phluid?
    Gender neutral toys?
    A fine?
    Lawmakers use of time?
    Meanwhile all other countries are laughing at the U.S.
    I’d say that is the caboose in a long train of abuses. Read your Declaration of Independence and declare independence already.
    …

    We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.
    That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.
    That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and, to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes. But
    when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty to throw off such Government, and to provide new guards for their future security.
    – The Declaration of Independence, 1776

  20. “Aisles” 6 inches long…
    .
    Empty shelves, mutants stole all the “toys” except maybe the F- California toys…
    .
    This could work.

  23. I think the California state legislature needs to designate a special section in their chambers in which to put all their intelligence-neutral bills, such as this one.

  26. We left Commiefornia 2-1/2 years ago, moved to the Kenai Peninsula and we love it here. No looking back or bringing blue state policies with us. Unbelievable what has happened to the previously Golden State; it is seriously tarnished

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