The Supreme Court ruled yesterday that “California’s gender transition policy for public schools, which requires teachers to hide from parents whether their child is seeking a gender transition, cannot be enforced” pending a final ruling on the merits by an appeals court, reports The College Fix.
“The case, Mirabelli v. Bonta, had argued California’s policy requires public schools to hide children’s expressed transgender status at school from their parents. Conservative legal organizations contended the policy grossly violates parental rights and teachers’ freedoms of speech and religion. The high court agreed.”
“California’s policies likely trigger strict scrutiny under [the First Amendment’s Free Exercise Clause] because they substantially interfere with the ‘right of parents to guide the religious development of their children,’” stated the majority of the Supreme Court in a per curiam order in the Mirabelli case.
The Justices applied their ruling last year in Mahmoud v. Taylor that parents have a right to remove their children from classroom activities harmful to their religious beliefs.
“The landmark 6-3 decision is the most significant parental rights ruling in a generation,” claimed the Thomas More Society in a press release. The Thomas More Society represents the parents. “The Court found that California’s secret transition regime likely violates parents’ rights under both the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment and the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, holding that the state ‘cut out the primary protectors of children’s best interests: their parents,’” it said.
A lawyer at the Thomas More Society claimed the Supreme Court’s order “is a watershed moment for parental rights in America.”
The Supreme Court’s three liberal justices dissented. “Justice Sonia Sotomayor did not explain her vote. But Justice Elena Kagan, joined by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, wrote that the decision amounts to a ‘malfunction’ of the court’s emergency docket,” says The Hill newspaper.
Last year, a federal judge in San Diego ruled in favor of the parents, and issued an injunction against the policy. Judge Roger Benitez ruled that “it’s wrong to deprive parents of significant information that may affect their child’s well-being and health,” the San Diego Union-Tribune reported, because freedom of speech protects teachers’ right to keep parents informed.
Early this year, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco stayed the trial judge’s injunction until the end of the appellate process. The plaintiffs’ lawyers responded by filing a petition for emergency relief asking the Supreme Court to reinstate the trial judge’s injunction.
Yesterday’s Supreme Court ruling vacated the Ninth Circuit’s stay, thus reinstating Judge Benitez’s injunction against California’s “Parental Exclusion Policies” until the conclusion of the appellate process.
