California Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer said Monday that school districts have no right telling parents their children are leaving campus to receive confidential medical treatment.

This opinion overturns recent movements at local levels to overturn so-called “medical emancipation” statutes that allow California minors to disappear from school campuses to seek medical attention.

In September, Rocklin Unified School District became the latest in a growing number of California school districts that chose to restrict their students from leaving campus without parental authorization. Parents in Placer County popularly supported the ruling. Parents from El Dorado County, who fought the statutes last spring, lauded the actions of their neighbors.

Yet, with so much passion from parent groups and anti-abortion activists, the issue appears to be over. Unless the Democratically controlled Legislature rescinds the statutes, the attorney general’s opinion indirectly voids any school code-forbidding students from confidentially seeking medical treatment.

Although parent’s rights advocates believe they deserve the right to know where their children go after dropping them off at school, state courts have long upheld statutes allowing minors to keep their health decisions private. State law allows minors to receive AIDS testing, abortions, drug treatment, psychological analysis, and medical therapy without having to inform their guardians.

Protecting the statute in 1997, the California Supreme Court declared a law that required minors to have parental or judicial consent for abortions as unconstitutional. This latest opinion by Lockyer is yet another defeat for parent’s rights advocates and pro-life groups.

With support from the state Legislature, Lockyer has long defended the privacy privileges of minors. After entering office in 1998, Lockyer, a Democrat, rescinded an opinion by former Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren that would have called for parental consent on minor medical care.

In his opinion, the attorney general said schools must “notify both students and their parents that students are allowed to be excused from school for confidential medical appointments without parental consent.” Lockyer went on to say that any school district that does not comply would “undermine the purposes and intent of the medical emancipation statutes.”

The attorney general’s opinion, No. 04-112, came at the request of Solano County Counsel Dennis Bunting.