The Supreme Court has blocked a California policy forbidding teachers from sharing a student’s gender identity with parents. In a 6-3 ruling, the Court reinstated a lower court order that blocked the notification policies, finding that they likely violate parental rights under the Free Exercise Clause and the Due Process Clause. The ruling said that while California “argues that its policies advance a compelling interest in student safety and privacy,” the policies “cut out the primary protectors of children’s best interests: their parents.”
“Under long-established precedent, parents—not the State—have primary authority with respect to ‘the upbringing and education of children,’” the Court declared.
“Gender dysphoria is a condition that has an important bearing on a child’s mental health, but when a child exhibits symptoms of gender dysphoria at school, California’s policies conceal that information from parents and facilitate a degree of gender transitioning during school hours,” the Court wrote. “These policies likely violate parents’ rights to direct the upbringing and education of their children.”
Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented. Kagan wrote in a dissent, joined by Jackson, that the “Court is impatient: It already knows what it thinks, and insists on getting everything over quickly.” She added that the case “presents some thorny legal issues.”
In December, U.S. District Court Judge Roger T. Benitez issued a permanent injunction against California’s policy, arguing that the “parental exclusion policies create a trifecta of harm: they harm the child who needs parental guidance and possibly mental health intervention to determine if the incongruence is organic or whether it is the result of bullying, peer pressure, or a fleeting impulse.”
