The Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear a challenge to a Wisconsin school district policy that facilitates gender transitions without informing parents. Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, and Brett Kavanaugh dissented, signaling they would have taken up the case.
The case centered on the Eau Claire Area School District, where policies reportedly allow staff to encourage gender transitions while withholding this information from parents. The parents argued in their petition that schools are undermining parental authority.
The petitioned outlined the dangerous policies in which schools are not obligated to inform parents of gender transitions, stating that “School is now like Las Vegas: ‘What happens at school stays at school,’” they wrote. The parents asserted their right to protect their children from decisions driven by “short-sighted desires.”
Parents are outraged that school districts are training their staff to to inform parents that they are “not entitled” to know about their child’s identity, noting “that knowledge must be earned.”
The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in March that the parents lacked standing because they had not been directly affected by the policy.
Justice Alito, joined by Thomas, warned of the broader implications of such policies. “This case presents a question of great and growing national importance: whether a public school district violates parents’ ‘fundamental constitutional right to make decisions concerning the rearing of’ their children…when, without parental knowledge or consent, it encourages a student to transition to a new gender or assists in that process,” Alito wrote in his dissent. He noted that over 1,000 school districts have adopted similar policies.
Alito criticized the lower court’s decision on standing, suggesting it avoided addressing a contentious constitutional issue. He noted that the school district’s own policy encourages staff to conceal gender transitions if they believe parents would disapprove. “The parents’ fear that the school district might make decisions for their children without their knowledge and consent is not speculative,” he wrote.
This rejection by the Supreme Court leaves the district’s policy intact and signals ongoing legal battles over parental rights and school authority.
