Supreme Court ruling on secretive California gender policy could reshape parent rights fights nationwide

Parental rights advocates celebrated Monday after the Supreme Court temporarily stopped California from blocking school policies requiring parents to be told when their child identifies as transgender.

Corey DeAngelis, a research fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, told Fox News Digital the high court’s order, in which the three liberal justices dissented, was a "huge win." The decision marks the latest in a string of victories for conservatives seeking to tighten policies surrounding transgender people, though DeAngelis noted it only applies to California at this stage.

"Parents in California should be very excited that the law that they have on the books to keep secrets from parents will no longer be in effect," DeAngelis said, adding, "This precedent is surely a sign of good things to come. If there's a lawsuit that arises in another state, you can be pretty sure that the Supreme Court is going to rule on the side of families."

The case, Mirabelli v. Bonta, arose from a lawsuit brought by California parents and teachers who argued that the state's policy violated their rights under the Fourteenth Amendment and religious freedom rights under the First Amendment. The parents said the policy prevented school administrators from telling them about their child’s potential efforts to engage in gender transitioning unless the child consented to it. The policy also required school staff to use a student’s preferred name and pronouns regardless of the parents’ wishes.

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After the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit sided with California Attorney General Rob Bonta, an elected Democrat, the parents and teachers appealed to the Supreme Court, and on an expedited and temporary basis, the high court vacated that order while the case proceeds through the lower courts.

"The State argues that its policies advance a compelling interest in student safety and privacy," the high court wrote in the unsigned order. "But those policies cut out the primary protectors of children’s best interests: their parents."

Justice Elena Kagan, an Obama appointee, wrote in a dissent that the temporary order was a sign that the Supreme Court’s emergency docket, sometimes known as a shadow docket, continued to "malfunction."

Attorneys for California argued that balancing the interests of parents and the "needs of transgender students" presented complex questions.

"In this case, the district court entered a sweeping permanent injunction that would require instant, dramatic changes from the status quo," California attorneys wrote. "Currently, under California’s laws and constitutional provisions on privacy and antidiscrimination, schools may balance parental interests with students’ particular needs and circumstances, such as the risk of harm upon disclosure of the student’s gender identity without student consent."

DeAngelis said the Supreme Court’s ruling also bolstered the case for school choice, which allows the government to funnel public education funds to schools parents want to send their children to that are not necessarily the designated public school in their neighborhood.

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"It would be great if more areas, like California, that are controlled by Democrats had policies like school choice. … You should be able to take your child's education dollars somewhere else, to a private school that's more aligned with your values, maybe a charter school," DeAngelis said.

He added that Monday's decision was a "wake-up call for school choice policy as well, because parents may be upset about a lot of things in the public schools. Transparency is just the very bare minimum that the public schools in too many places aren't getting right."

Carrie Severino, president of the conservative JCN Network, said the 9th Circuit appeared to disregard the Supreme Court’s key ruling last year in Mahmoud v. Taylor, which allowed parents to opt their children out of lessons that involved gender ideology or other sensitive topics based on religious beliefs.

"The liberal Ninth Circuit disregarded the Court’s ruling in Mahmoud," Severino wrote. "Today, the justices reaffirmed the principles of its landmark ruling and said that California’s law substantially interferes with the ‘right of parents to guide the religious development of their children.’"

New York Times columnist David French also agreed with the high court’s decision.

"The idea that a school could withhold such key information about a child from the child's parents (in the absence of evidence of abuse) was ludicrously unconstitutional from the beginning," French wrote on X.