SerpApi.Org
A group of Jesuit High School alumni, parents, students, donors and supporters have sued the private Catholic school over its plan to begin admitting girls in 2027.
The plaintiff, a group called Men for Others, claims the Carmichael school is abandoning its all-boys mission and announced the decision with little community involvement.
The lawsuit filed last week in Sacramento Superior Court follows the all-boys Catholic school’s October announcement that it would end its tradition of educating only boys, after six decades in response to a “changing educational landscape,” including declining enrollment.
The lawsuit lists breach of fiduciary duty, fraud and negligent misrepresentation among its causes for action and seeks declaratory relief via jury trial.
“I just did not appreciate the obfuscation that the administration continues to engage in regarding the decisions made,” said Ulises Pizano-Diaz, the attorney representing Men for Others.
“They give no substantive reason why the change was happening. The simple statement that they’ve kept repeating is that the board decision is final.”
Why the school says the change is needed
Jesuit Sacramento was founded in 1963 and has operated as an all-boys school since then. Under the new co-divisional model, boys and girls would attend the same school but take separate core classes during their freshman, sophomore and junior years while sharing common areas, with some classes becoming combined during senior year.
Elizabeth Sands, a spokesperson for the school, said Jesuit is licensed to enroll up to 1,100 students and has room to accept several hundred female students without reducing the number of boys admitted. Sands explained that declining enrollment was a “catalyst” for the school’s decision.
The school is working to ensure it remains “viable and sustainable for many years to come” amid changing demographics in the community, Sands said.
“This is not a crisis immediate today, but we are looking ahead as we forecast, and we want to be proactive for the strength of our school instead of waiting until it has hit that cliff and detrimental occurrence,” Sands added.
California schools have faced significant enrollment declines in recent years. Statewide K-12 enrollment fell by about 7% from 2014 to 2024, declining from roughly 6.2 million students to 5.8 million, according to the Public Policy Institute of California.
The lawsuit disputes the school’s enrollment and financial justification, arguing that there are “plenty of reasons to be skeptical” that those concerns were real. It notes that Jesuit had nearly $75 million in net assets entering the 2025-26 school year and alleges the school rejected about $10 million in pledges from a group of alumni seeking to preserve the all-boys model.
The lawsuit also claims that when the same group offered $100,000 to fund a study looking into whether the transition was needed and whether other options were available, the school rejected the proposal. It further alleges that when parents publicly criticized the decision and asked the school to delay the transition, their sons were “threatened with disciplinary action.”
The dispute “is not about the wisdom of the Board’s decision, but whether the Board had the authority to fundamentally alter the school’s mission and purpose that it was entrusted to protect,” the lawsuit reads, in part.
Lawsuit challenges how the decision was made
According to the lawsuit, the proposal was brought forward after several trustees who supported keeping Jesuit all-boys had left the board in 2025. Jim Bowman, an alumnus who supports keeping the school all-boys, said the decision should have gone through a more open and thorough review process.
“Such a momentous change to one of the greater Sacramento area’s most important assets needs to be vetted in an open and honest, non-political manner,” Bowman said.
However, the Jesuit High School Board of Trustees’ Legal Affairs Committee said in a statement to The Sacramento Bee that the lawsuit “mischaracterizes” the process followed by the board, noting that the decision followed a thorough review and was approved and endorsed by both the provincial of the Jesuits West Province and the bishop of the Diocese of Sacramento.
“The co-divisional model will create distinct Boys and Girls Divisions within one Jesuit school community and will extend the benefits of a Jesuit education to young women throughout the Sacramento region,” Amy Rogers, chair of Jesuit’s Board of Trustees, wrote in a separate statement.
“Planning for the 2027 launch continues, and the school remains focused on serving its current students and families while advancing our mission for future generations.”
