SCOTUS rules against CA’s ‘secret gender transition’ law allowing schools to keep it from parents

(The Center Square) - The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled in favor of plaintiffs in a lawsuit against a California law that allowed public schools to conceal a student’s “gender transitions” from their parents, a policy SCOTUS ruled likely violates the First and Fourteenth amendments.

The lawsuit filed by the Thomas More Society in 2023 when two Escondido teachers sued the Escondido Unified School District in San Diego County, the California Department of Education and Attorney General Rob Bonta, after they were denied a religious accommodation from school policies that required staff to use students’ preferred pronouns and, upon request.

However, it also required the teachers to withhold information about a child’s gender identity from parents.

The state of California managed to pause a permanent injunction via the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit. In response, the Thomas More Society filed an emergency application with the U.S. Supreme Court, requesting intervention in the lawsuit.

According to the SCOTUS ruling, the parents of a student who later joined in the lawsuit were not told by educators when their daughter began to identify as a boy and use a male name. It was only after she attempted suicide and was hospitalized that the parents were told by doctors she was identifying as a boy at school.

In its 6-3 ruling, SCOTUS’s majority opinion concluded that “the State argues that its policies advance a compelling interest in student safety and privacy. But those policies cut out the primary protectors of children’s best interests: their parents. The parents who object to the California policies on free exercise grounds are likely to succeed on the merits. The same is true for the subclass of parents who object to those policies on due process grounds.”

In a press release statement, Thomas More Society Special Counsel Paul M. Jonna wrote that “this is a watershed moment for parental rights in America. “The Supreme Court has told California and every state in the nation in no uncertain terms: you cannot secretly transition a child behind a parent’s back. The Court’s landmark reaffirmation of substantive due process, its vindication of religious liberty, and its approval of class-wide relief together set a historic precedent that will dismantle secret gender transition policies across the country.”

Similar laws in Washington state have been legally challenged and upheld by the 9th Circuit.