California must allow teachers in its public schools to notify parents that their child identifies as transgender, the Supreme Court ruled Monday, rejecting a state policy that a lower court had upheld.
“Those policies cut out the primary protectors of children’s best interests: their parents,” the court’s conservative majority wrote in a 6-3 ruling. A federal judge’s order requiring parental notification “promotes child safety by guaranteeing fit parents a role in some of the most consequential decisions in their children’s lives.”
The ruling was unsigned and was issued without a hearing in the case, but it was supported by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. The court’s three Democratic appointees, Justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, dissented and criticized the majority’s refusal to apply the court’s usual procedures to the case, with Kagan writing that the court “owes it to a sovereign State to avoid throwing over its policies in a slapdash way.”
California lawmakers in 2024 passed a measure that forbids schools from requiring educators to disclose to parents when a student chooses to identify as transgender. The law did not ban educators from discussing a student’s gender identity with parents.
The state’s top education official, Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond, has said his office does not require school districts to prohibit their teachers from informing parents that their child is transgender, and noted in court filings that the policy was no longer on the department’s website.
But U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez of San Diego said in a ruling in December that the state’s policy had been adopted by more than half of California’s schools, and that it violated parents’ rights.
“When it comes to a student’s change in gender identity, California state policymakers apparently do not trust parents to do the right thing for their child,” wrote Benitez, an appointee of President George W. Bush. He said the state’s policies “harm the child who needs parental guidance and possibly mental health intervention” and violate parents’ constitutional rights “to care, guide, and make health care decisions for their children.”
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals quickly put Benitez’s decision on hold, and then ruled Jan. 6 that the judge had misunderstood both the state’s policies and the law.
California “does not categorically forbid disclosure of information about students’ gender identities to parents without student consent,” and allows such disclosures when needed “to protect the student’s well-being,” the three-judge panel said. The public interest in protecting students and avoiding confusion among schoolteachers and administrators weighs in favor of a stay” of Benitez’s decision.
The panel members, Chief Judge Mary Murguia and Judges Andrew Hurwitz and Salvador Mendoza, were all appointed by Democratic presidents.
After Monday’s decision, state Republican Party Chairwoman Corrin Rankin said she was “thrilled the Supreme Court told California Democrats what we all know and believe, that parents are not optional, despite them acting as if they were. If a school is making life-changing decisions about your child, you have the right to know.”
But state officials and transgender advocates said the mandatory “outing” of children to their parents would violate their privacy and could put some of them in danger.
“As the daughter of a father who had opposite views from me and physically abused his children, I would never have felt safe confiding in him about something significant in my life that was contrary to his ultra-conservative views,” Assembly Member Gail Pellerin, D-Santa Cruz, said during debate on the 2024 state law.
According to an analysis of the AB1955 by Assembly Member Chris Ward, D-San Diego, a nationwide survey of thousands of LGBTQ teenagers in 2023 found that 46% had considered suicide in the previous year and 17% had attempted to take their own lives. And a 2021 survey of more than 22,000 LGBTQ people ages13-21 reported that 82% had felt unsafe at school.
The Supreme Court has upheld laws in Republican-led states that ban hormone therapy and other medical treatment sought by transgender minors and, at a hearing last month, appeared likely to rule in favor of state laws prohibiting transgender females from competing on school sports teams for women and girls. The justices have, however, also ruled that a federal law against sex discrimination in employment protects transgender workers and job applicants.
In their Supreme Court appeal in the California case, a conservative legal organization representing teachers and parents advocating parental notification said the state was forcing teachers “to lie to parents.”
“California is requiring public schools to hide children’s expressed transgender status at school from their own parents – including religious parents – and to actively facilitate those children’s ‘social transition’ over their parents’ express objections,” attorney Paul Jonna of the Thomas More Society wrote in the appeal. “Teachers also face a direct collision of duty and conscience.”
Jonna said California’s policies were at odds with the legal standards the court declared last June in Mahmoud v. Taylor, when a 6-3 majority ruled that parents with religious objections to schoolbooks that refer favorably to lesbians, gays or transgender people had the right to be notified and remove their young children from class.
California already has a law allowing parents with religious objections to their children’s schoolbooks to remove their children from class, but the law applies only to classes related to health care.
The Supreme Court case on parental notification is Mirabelli v. Bonta, No 25A810.
This article originally published at California must let schools out transgender students to parents, U.S. Supreme Court rules.