High Court gives temporary victory to those challenging trans policy on religious grounds
6-3 ruling from emergency docket involves schools keeping info from parents
In a decision based partly on freedom-of-religion grounds, the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday evening issued a preliminary ruling that in effect requires a California school district to inform parents when their children are engaging in gender transitioning at school.
Technically, the ruling does not set a precedent on the contentious issue because it is not a final ruling in the case, which involves a group of parents and teachers who are suing California and school officials to require public schools to inform parents about gender transitioning even when the student does not give a school consent to do so. The ruling only reinstates a low-level federal court injunction while the case, Mirabelli v. Bonta, goes through the appeals process. The decision was made through the Supreme Court’s emergency docket, meaning that oral arguments have not been held and that the case was not fully argued even in written form.
Even so, the Roman Catholic-oriented Thomas More Society, which represents the plaintiffs in the case, praised the decision as a “historic and groundbreaking ruling” and “the most significant parental rights ruling in a generation.”
The 6-3 decision was made along the court’s usual ideological lines, although concurring and dissenting opinions signed by four justices indicated the existence of divisions.
According to the main opinion, the case began in 2023 when two teachers sued seeking an exemption from their school district’s policy that required them to not inform parents when their children were addressed by names and pronouns contrary to their sex designated at birth. Parents later joined the lawsuit. One of the sets of parents, the pseudonymous John and Jane Poe, said that they were not told that their daughter1 was using male names and pronouns at school, and that they did not learn that she had gender dysphoria until after she attempted suicide. Another set of parents, John and Jane Doe, said they were unable to get information from a school principal about whether their daughter was presenting as male at her school. A federal district court sided with the parents with a preliminary injunction, but the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals stayed that injunction. It was an appeal from the appeals court that this week’s ruling reversed.
The Supreme Court majority said it made its decision for these reasons:
🟪 The parents would likely win their case following the precedent set by last year’s Mahmoud v. Taylor decision, which sided with parents objecting to certain uses of pro-LGBTQ storybooks.
🟪 The parents face irreparable harm if their constitutional rights are denied.
🟪 The trial court’s injunction “promotes child safety by guaranteeing fit parents a role in some of the most consequential decisions in their children’s lives.”
Justice Elena Kagan, joined by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, wrote a vigorous dissent based largely on procedural grounds, claiming that the court was abusing its ability to make substantive rulings from its emergency docket. She said that the case presents “thorny issues” but suggested that its decision was made “in a slapdash way.” She said that while the parents may ultimately win their case, any rulings should be made with full consideration of the legal issues involved.
It is too soon to know whether this case will ultimately return to the Supreme Court. But even if it doesn’t, there is at least one other case considering similar issues that is making its way through the court system.
This article describes the students by using the gender given in the Supreme Court opinion.