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The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) has issued a landmark decision that should cause fear among school boards across America. In the case of Mirabelli v. See, the Court held that California’s law prohibiting schools from disclosing to parents their child’s “sex” claims at school violates parents’ free exercise rights under the First Amendment and their due process rights under the Fourteenth Amendment.
The Supreme Court has ruled that California’s policy of publicly reassigning children in school without parental consent likely violates the free exercise rights of those “who hold sincere religious beliefs about sex and sexuality, and who feel a religious obligation to raise their children in accordance with those beliefs.” The Court went on to note that this “prohibited promotion of child gender reassignment is greater than the teaching of LGBTQ magazines” which the Court addressed last summer in Mahmoud v. Taylor. The Court also found Mahmoud that Montgomery County Public Schools violated the rights of the dissenting parents. That school district paid $1.5 million to settle the lawsuit.
SCOTUS also made clear that California’s policy requiring schools to keep a student’s “gender identity” secret from parents likely violated their “well-founded rights to direct the upbringing and education of their children” and that the denial of these rights “does irreparable harm.”
The importance of this decision to parents cannot be overstated. Schools across America must now ask for parental consent before making a child’s transition to the opposite sex. In other words, if a student wants to have the opposite gender pronouns spoken at school or use the opposite gender bathroom or laundry room, the school must get parental permission. Schools will no longer be able to hide or encourage the conduct of a student’s gender transition from parents and pretend it is legal.
Anyone who’s been paying attention to what’s been happening in America’s public schools for the past five years knows that California isn’t the only place where K-12 school districts have actively hidden student turnover from parents. For example, in Virginia, Loudoun County Public Schools’ Regulation 8040 states “[a] A student’s gender identity or transgender status should not be shared without the student’s consent.” The district’s teacher training documents state that “privacy and confidentiality are important for transgender students whose families do not support or affirm their gender identity,” and when students “don’t want their parents to know about their gender.” [] schools have to deal with this individually.”
Applying the Supreme Court’s holding in Mirabelli to those policies leads to only one conclusion – they are patently unconstitutional. School boards that continue to uphold these policies do so at their own risk, which may include personal lawsuits against school board members and other officials and punitive damages. And to be clear, the risk of litigation is not limited to parents whose children have transitioned into the community at school. Rather, as the Court made clear, “parents who object to the challenged policies or seek religious exemptions” must sue “because they are the targets of the challenged policy.” That means any parent whose school district has a policy like Loudoun’s can sue, individually or as part of a class action, to be deprived of free exercise and due process rights.
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The Mirabelli ruling gives parents stronger rights to require schools to seek parental consent before their child is called by a different gender pronoun, a different name, or uses a different gender bathroom or hallway. Also, it doesn’t take a great leap to argue that parents’ free exercise and due process rights to direct their children’s upbringing and education can also be violated when someone else’s child starts using the same gender’s changing rooms or restrooms.
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Imagine a boy who is allowed to use the girls’ locker room as part of his social transition at school. Parents of girls who use that changing room may have religious, philosophical, or safety objections to their daughters changing with people of the opposite sex. Unless the school informs parents that their daughters will be exposed to a male student in their locker room before it happens, parents of girls are denied the ability to take action they deem necessary to direct their children’s upbringing and education. That’s exactly what happened in Loudoun County.
Unfortunately, even with a clear ruling by the United States Supreme Court, some American school boards and administrators will likely continue to violate the Constitution. They need to be taken to court and forced to stop and pay a heavy price for their disobedience. The SCOTUS decision reaffirms what the Constitution says and legal precedent has affirmed: parents have a Constitutional right to parent their children. Parents have the legal authority and power to do this and – and should use it.
