NJ school district’s secretive transgender policy faces legal threat for bucking Supreme Court ruling
A New Jersey school district is being threatened with legal action unless it repeals a policy that lets schools withhold students’ gender-identity information from parents, setting up what could become an early test of the Supreme Court’s recent intervention in the fight over parental rights and school disclosure rules.
The Thomas More Society, a conservative legal group, accused the Westwood Regional School District in a demand letter of wrongfully maintaining the policy, which also allows the schools, in some cases, to aid K-12 students’ "social transition" to becoming transgender without their parents' knowledge.
The move comes weeks after the Supreme Court dealt a major victory to conservative parents in Mirabelli v. Bonta by upholding an injunction against a similar policy in California.
"I had hoped this would end the practice of secret gender transitions, but what's becoming clear to us is this is just the beginning," Peter Breen, Thomas More Society executive vice president, told Fox News Digital. "This is not an end, but a beginning, our big win in the Supreme Court. We are already fielding requests from other parents across the country, and we anticipate sending a lot more demand letters, unfortunately."
Fox News Digital reached out to the school district board members who received the letter, as well as the district's superintendent, for comment but did not receive responses. The school board told local media earlier in March that members were consulting with district counsel and reviewing policies.
The letter requires the New Jersey school district to repeal its policy, called Policy 5756, within 20 days. Otherwise, Breen said, the Thomas More Society would follow the same path it did in California and begin litigation.
"When the Supreme Court decides a case, the logic of the decision is binding on every other court in the country, federal or state," Breen said. "And so, the Supreme Court has said that parents have a fundamental right to control the upbringing and education of their children… and so a school official who defies that right could be subject individually to a lawsuit, not just the school district."
In Mirabelli, California parents and teachers argued that the state's transgender policy violated their rights under the First and 14th Amendments. The policy prevented school administrators from telling parents about their child’s potential efforts to transition their gender unless the child consented to it. It also required school staff to use students' preferred names and pronouns regardless of the parents’ wishes.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit sided with Democratic Attorney General Rob Bonta in the case, leading the parents and teachers to turn to the Supreme Court. The high court vacated the 9th Circuit's order 6-3 on an expedited and temporary basis while the case proceeds through the lower courts. The three liberal justices dissented.
FEDERAL JUDGE STRIKES DOWN 'GENDER SECRECY' POLICIES IN CALIFORNIA PUBLIC SCHOOLS
"The State argues that its policies advance a compelling interest in student safety and privacy," the high court's majority wrote in the unsigned opinion. "But those policies cut out the primary protectors of children’s best interests: their parents."
Corey DeAngelis, a research fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, observed to Fox News Digital at the time that the Supreme Court's decision was the latest in a string of victories for conservatives seeking to tighten policies surrounding transgender people. DeAngelis noted it only applied to California, despite its anticipated impact on other states.
"This precedent is surely a sign of good things to come," DeAngelis said. "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 Supreme Court has weighed in recently on several key gender identity disputes through full opinions and emergency orders, and the decisions have broken along ideological lines. Outside Mirabelli, the high court in United States v. Skrmetti affirmed 6-3 a state's authority to ban certain transgender medical treatment for minors under the equal protection clause. In a 6-3 emergency ruling last year, the justices temporarily greenlit President Donald Trump's ban on transgender service members serving in the military.
The high court is also weighing two relevant and closely watched cases, one on a religious-based therapist offering alternative counseling to transgender youths and one on transgender athletes. Decisions on those are expected by the summer.