Teachers union, labor bureaucrats make 'end run' around parents, democracy, district tells SCOTUS

Nearly eight years after the Supreme Court put a stop to public-sector labor unions imposing fees on non-members as a condition of work, invalidating 22 state laws and prompting a precipitous drop in union membership, it reinstated a permanent injunction against California's so-called gender secrecy policies in schools as a likely violation of parental rights.

The high court now has an opportunity to alchemize these disparate precedents into protection for parents' constitutional rights against state labor regulators with Galactus-sized jurisdictional appetites.

Sacramento-area Rocklin Unified School District petitioned SCOTUS to review cursory California court rulings that upheld the invalidation of its parental notification policy for students who identify as the opposite sex, with the Golden State's Public Employee Relations Board saying it violated the collective bargaining agreement.

Fifteen months ago PERB affirmed a ruling by its administrative law judge, ordering the district to rescind the disclosure regulations its board approved in fall 2023. A California appeals court affirmed the ruling in a single-sentence, October 2025 order, and the state Supreme Court denied the district's review petition Jan. 14.

"This raises a critical question: Does California’s PERB system, where PERB almost always rules in favor of the union, and which requires no judicial oversight, violate the due process rights protected by the Fourteenth Amendment – particularly where those decisions affect protected constitutional rights?" asked RUSD's lawyers at the Liberty Justice Center.

Rocklin Unified has fought a two-front war to protect its parental notification policy, with California Democratic Attorney General Rob Bonta denouncing the district for the "forced outing" of "transgender and gender-nonconforming students" the day after it adopted the policy.

Bonta sued RUSD before the PERB ruling but after U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez blocked Escondido Union's gender secrecy policy as applied to two teachers, crediting that San Diego-area district's argument that the state forced it to deceive parents. 

Benitez would later certify a class action against California's gender secrecy policies and permanently block them. Last month, he awarded over $4.5 million in attorney's fees to the victorious plaintiffs, blaming the state's "litigation intransigence" for the sum.

Granting the RUSD petition could give insight into how SCOTUS may view a related constitutional question involving the structure of the National Labor Relations Board, which protects private-sector employees' right to organize and polices unfair labor practices.

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals blocked NLRB's in-house adjudications of Elon Musk's SpaceX and two other companies last summer based on the "double-layer of job security" enjoyed by its ALJs against presidential removal, citing a SCOTUS precedent against the Securities and Exchange Commission's ALJs.

SCOTUS is likely in no hurry to decide the NLRB constitutional question, given that the agency dismissed its SpaceX complaint for lack of jurisdiction in February – after the National Mediation Board determined SpaceX is not even subject to the National Labor Relations Act.

"In the absence of a circuit split in these cases, the remaining constitutional challenges likely will not reach the Supreme Court until decided on the merits and appealed through the lower courts," Proskauer partner Joshua Fox wrote in a March essay.

'No nexus to wages, hours of employment, other terms'

The SCOTUS petition by LJC and co-counsel California Policy Center argues the PERB ruling exceeds its jurisdiction and violates parents' Fourteenth Amendment right "to direct the upbringing and care of their children" and procedural due process by letting PERB adjudicate constitutional disputes under "discretionary and highly deferential judicial review."

"PERB and the teachers’ union have staged an end run around the rights of both parents and the elected officials charged with responsibility of protecting those rights," CPC President Emily Rae said.

Unlike the teachers who challenged Escondido Union's gender secrecy policy, setting in motion the legal proceeding that would eventually doom the state's policies, Rocklin Teachers Professional Association filed a cease-and-desist demand, the petition says.

"RTPA demanded notice and an opportunity to bargain" before the board even approved the disclosure policy, despite the fact that it "has no nexus to wages, hours of employment, or other terms and conditions of employment," LJC wrote.

Several months after the ALJ agreed with the union's "unfair practice charge," Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom signed AB 1955 into law, banning districts from requiring staff to notify parents of their children's gender confusion but not banning disclosure itself. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is still reviewing a challenge to the law by other districts.

SCOTUS undercut PERB's affirmation of the ALJ last month by overruling the 9th Circuit and reinstating Judge Benitez's permanent injunction against California's gender secrecy policies as enshrined in regulation, apart from AB 1955, "affirming the principles that were the direct subject of the District’s Parental Notification Policy," the petition says.

The 6-3 majority emphasized parents have prerogative over schools as "the primary protectors of children’s best interests" and cannot be constitutionally excluded from knowledge about their children's gender confusion, which "has an important bearing on a child’s mental health,” or school-facilitated social transitioning, LJC and CPC noted.

Judges appointed for pro-union views circumvent review by real courts

Contrary to California's argument that AB 1955 merely codified districts' existing legal obligations, RUSD's policy merely codified "the existing rights of the constituents who elected them to power" yet the union circumvented them by "utilizing PERB to fulfill its political agenda," the petition says.

"If PERB’s decision is left to stand, a union could sue a school board over any policy it opposes on substance" as a collective-bargaining violation, aided by a system "where appointed judges are chosen because of their favorable view of unions" and issue rulings that evade review "by a court of competent jurisdiction," giving unions "final say."

The petition emphasizes the "rights at issue in this matter have been explicitly codified and repeatedly addressed" as recently as last month, when SCOTUS affirmed Benitez's finding that parental rights cannot take a backseat to the government's concern "about a general possibility of abuse or parental nonacceptance" when a child shows "gender incongruity."

California courts' abdication of their responsibility to review PERB decisions grants an administrative agency "inordinate authority" to conduct a "full-fledged legal analysis in an area beyond its purview" and forces citizens into the "nonsensical" position of litigating "constitutional rights within the confines of a labor dispute board," the petition says.

It cites Justice Neil Gorsuch's concurrence in the SCOTUS ruling rejecting the SEC's ALJs as a legitimate substitute for a jury trial when the government seeks civil penalties, which Gorsuch dismissed as "ad hoc adjudication procedures before the very same agency responsible for prosecuting the law, subject only to hands-off judicial review."

Allowing the PERB rigamarole to stand will "enable forum shopping with significant constitutional consequences," the petition warns.

Respondents PERB and RTPA did not answer Just the News queries.