{"id":113,"date":"2026-03-03T10:47:21","date_gmt":"2026-03-03T10:47:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/113\/"},"modified":"2026-03-03T10:47:21","modified_gmt":"2026-03-03T10:47:21","slug":"supreme-court-california-parents-may-be-told-about-their-transgender-child-at-school","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/113\/","title":{"rendered":"Supreme Court: California parents may be told about their transgender child at school"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

WASHINGTON \u00a0\u2014\u00a0The Supreme Court revived a San Diego judge\u2019s order<\/a> Monday and said parents have a right to know about their child\u2019s gender identity at school. <\/p>\n

The decision came in a 6-3 order<\/a> granting an emergency appeal from lawyers for Chicago-based Thomas More Society.<\/p>\n

They said the student privacy policy enforced in California infringes on parents\u2019 rights and the free exercise of religion.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe parents object that these policies prevent schools from telling them about their children\u2019s efforts to engage in gender transitioning at school unless the children consent to parental notification,\u201d the court said. \u201cThe parents also take issue with California\u2019s requirement that schools use children\u2019s preferred names and pronouns regardless of their parents\u2019 wishes.\u201d<\/p>\n

The judge\u2019s injunction \u201cdoes not provide relief for all the parents of California public school students, but only for those parents who object to the challenged policies or seek religious exemptions,\u201d the justices added.<\/p>\n

The six conservatives were in the majority, while the three liberals dissented. <\/p>\n

Religious liberty advocates hailed the decision.<\/p>\n

\u201cParents\u2019 fundamental right to raise their children according to their faith doesn\u2019t stop at the schoolhouse door,\u201d said Mark Rienzi, president of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty. \u201cCalifornia tried cutting parents out of their children\u2019s lives while forcing teachers to hide the school\u2019s behavior from parents. We\u2019re glad the Court stepped in to block this anti-family, anti-American policy.\u201d<\/p>\n

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals had put on hold a late December ruling by U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez, who held that the student privacy rules enforced by California school officials were unconstitutional.<\/p>\n

\u201cParents and guardians have a federal constitutional right to be informed if their public school student child expresses gender incongruence,\u201d Benitez wrote. \u201cTeachers and school staff have a federal constitutional right to accurately inform the parent or guardian of their student when the student expresses gender incongruence.\u201d<\/p>\n

Escondido public schoolteachers Elizabeth Mirabelli and Lori Ann West, who described themselves as \u201cdevout Catholics,\u201d sued in 2023, and they were later joined by parents in Pasadena and Clovis.<\/p>\n

The Supreme Court\u2019s ruling refers only to the parents.<\/p>\n

The parents who brought the case \u201chave sincere religious beliefs about sex and gender, and they feel a religious obligation to raise their children in accordance with those beliefs,\u201d the court said.<\/p>\n

The court added: \u201cGender dysphoria is a condition that has an important bearing on a child\u2019s mental health, but when a child exhibits symptoms of gender dysphoria at school, California\u2019s policies conceal that information from parents and facilitate a degree of gender transitioning during school hours.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a watershed moment for parental rights in America,\u201d said Paul M. Jonna, special counsel at Thomas More Society. \u201cThe Supreme Court has told California and every state in the nation in no uncertain terms: you cannot secretly transition a child behind a parent\u2019s back.\u201d<\/p>\n

The 9th Circuit had agreed with the state\u2019s attorneys who said the judge had misstated California law. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe state does not categorically forbid disclosure of information about students\u2019 gender identities to parents without student consent,\u201d they said in a 3-0 decision.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor example, guidance from the California Attorney General expressly states that schools can \u2018allow disclosure where a student does not consent where there is a compelling need to do so to protect the student\u2019s well-being,\u2019 and California Education Code allows disclosure to avert a clear danger to the well-being of a child.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the parents\u2019 rights appeal to the Supreme Court, attorneys said school employees are secretly encouraging gender transitions. <\/p>\n

\u201cCalifornia is requiring public schools to hide children\u2019s expressed transgender status at school from their own parents \u2014 including religious parents \u2014 and to actively facilitate those children\u2019s social transitions over their parents\u2019 express objection,\u201d they told the court. <\/p>\n

\u201cRight now, California\u2019s parental deception scheme is keeping families in the dark and causing irreparable harm. That\u2019s why we\u2019re asking the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene immediately,\u201d Jonna wrote in his appeal. \u201cEvery day these gender secrecy policies stay in effect, children suffer and parents are left in the dark.\u201d <\/p>\n

California state attorneys had urged the court to put the case on hold while it is under appeal. <\/p>\n

They said the judge\u2019s order \u201cappears to categorically bar schools across the State from ever respecting a student\u2019s desire for privacy about their gender identity or expression \u2014 or respecting a student\u2019s request to be addressed by a particular name or pronouns \u2014 over a parent\u2019s objection.\u201d<\/p>\n

They said the order \u201cwould allow no exceptions, even for extreme cases where students or teachers reasonably fear that the student will suffer physical or mental abuse.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON \u00a0\u2014\u00a0The Supreme Court revived a San Diego judge\u2019s order Monday and said parents have a right to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":114,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[142,154,151,68,150,8,155,153,9,149,147,152,144,148,146,145,7,143],"class_list":{"0":"post-113","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-top-stories","8":"tag-california-parent","9":"tag-case","10":"tag-disclosure","11":"tag-gender","12":"tag-gender-identity","13":"tag-headlines","14":"tag-information","15":"tag-judge","16":"tag-news","17":"tag-order-monday","18":"tag-policy","19":"tag-right","20":"tag-school","21":"tag-state","22":"tag-student","23":"tag-supreme-court","24":"tag-top-stories","25":"tag-transgender-child"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=113"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/114"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}