The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday blocked California’s ban on schools outing transgender students to their parents without the student’s approval.
Granting an emergency appeal to a conservative legal group, the 6-3 vote now allows schools to disclose to parents if students change their pronouns or gender expression at school. The court’s ruling addressed parents’ claim of rights under the free exercise clause of the First Amendment, which protects free speech and religious expression.
“The parents who assert a free exercise claim have sincere religious beliefs about sex and gender, and they feel a religious obligation to raise their children in accordance with those beliefs,” the court ruling stated.
The 2024 California law stated that the ban on automatic parental notification ensured students’ rights to privacy as well as protected transgender students “from the reasonable risk of physical, emotional, and psychological harm that forced disclosure causes.”
The Thomas More Society, a conservative group representing parents and teachers, said the ruling is “the most significant parental rights ruling in a generation.” The order, which followed the Trump administration’s investigation into the claim in January that California violated parents’ right to access students’ gender identity records, secured another win for the parental rights movement.
“The right protected by these precedents includes the right not to be shut out of participation in decisions regarding their children’s mental health,” the court stated in the ruling, referencing the 14th Amendment.
Liberal Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented. Kagan said the court’s decision contradicted its previous interpretations of the 14th Amendment, pointing to the overturning of Roe v. Wade, which established that the Constitution protects rights even if they are not spelled out in text.
The new ruling “cannot but induce a strong sense of whiplash,” Kagan wrote.
This story was written by Vani Sanganeria for EdSource. The original version of this article can be viewed here.