The nation’s highest court delivered a significant ruling Monday, temporarily suspending California regulations that can prevent schools from sharing details about transgender students’ gender identity with their parents unless the student agrees to the disclosure.
The Supreme Court sided with Christian families and educators who filed suit against these safeguards, arguing the policies infringed upon their constitutional rights to religious freedom and parental authority under the First and Fourteenth Amendments. The court approved an emergency petition to restore a lower court’s decision while the legal battle moves forward, overturning an appeals court’s previous suspension of that ruling.
The court’s three liberal members opposed Monday’s action.
This California case represents one of numerous legal battles nationwide involving efforts to safeguard the privacy of transgender and gender-nonconforming students in educational settings.
The justices are simultaneously weighing whether to hear a separate case involving a Massachusetts school district regarding staff support for students’ gender identity. In 2024, the court declined to review similar legal challenges from Wisconsin and Maryland.
The Supreme Court, dominated by a 6-3 conservative majority, has faced repeated requests to rule on President Donald Trump’s administration and Republican-controlled states’ efforts to limit transgender individuals’ rights.
Last year, the high court supported Tennessee’s prohibition on gender-affirming medical treatment for transgender minors and also permitted Trump’s military ban on transgender service members. On January 13, justices heard arguments about Idaho and West Virginia laws preventing transgender athletes from competing on female sports teams, with conservative justices seemingly prepared to support those limitations.
California’s statutes include multiple provisions, such as privacy rights under the state constitution, which officials say could apply when transgender students oppose revealing their gender identities to parents or guardians, sometimes due to concerns about hostility, rejection, or potential violence.
Those bringing the 2023 constitutional challenge argued the policies force public schools to enable “secret gender transition” and to “hide children’s expressed transgender status at school from their own parents – including religious parents.”
The Democratic-led state has maintained the provisions don’t actually prohibit sharing information with parents and sometimes even permit or mandate disclosure when withholding such information could threaten the student’s wellbeing.
Christian educators from the Escondido Union School District in San Diego County initiated the lawsuit, contending that following these policies violated their First Amendment protections for free speech and religious practice.
Two deeply Catholic married couples also joined the litigation, claiming their children identified as transgender boys at school without parental knowledge or approval, violating their religious freedoms and their parental rights under the 14th Amendment’s due process clause to guide their children’s care.
U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez ruled for the plaintiffs in December and issued an injunction blocking these policies.
“A child’s gender incongruity is a matter of health. Matters of a child’s health are matters over which parents have the highest right and duty of care,” Benitez stated in his decision.
Benitez prohibited the state regulations that would stop school staff from notifying parents “about their child’s gender presentation at school” or permit using names or pronouns that don’t “match the child’s legal name and natal pronouns” without parental approval.
The San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals suspended Benitez’s decision on January 5, pointing to numerous flaws in the judge’s reasoning.
“A preliminary review of the record shows that the state does not categorically forbid disclosure of information about students’ gender identities to parents without student consent,” the 9th Circuit stated in its ruling.
