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The court turned down a case out of Wisconsin, involving a school district that allows students to affirm their trans identity without necessarily notifying their parents.
The U.S. Supreme Court has turned down a chance to review school policies on gender affirmation.
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The court issued an order Monday declining to take up a lawsuit by a group of parents against the Eau Claire Area School District in Wisconsin. Liberty Justice Center, declining to take up a lawsuit by a group of parents against the Eau Claire Area School District in Wisconsin. The parents are challenging a policy that allows transgender, nonbinary, and gender-nonconforming students to use their chosen names and pronouns at school and to use the restrooms to match their gender identity. Parents do not have to be notified or give consent.
The group, called Parents Protecting Our Children, filed the suit in 2022, arguing that the policy “violates parents’ constitutional rights as well as the First Amendment’s guarantee to the free exercise of religion,” says a press release from the Liberty Justice Center, which filed a friend-of-the-court brief supporting the parents. The parents are represented by two conservative legal organizations, the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty and America First Legal.
Most members of Parents Protecting Our Children “hold religious beliefs that ‘there are only two sexes’ and ‘would not immediately “affirm” whatever beliefs their children might have about their gender,’ the lawsuit stated,” as quoted by Reuters. School officials said the policy has been misunderstood and that all the information is on file and available to parents.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Stephen Crocker ruled that the parents had not shown they were harmed by the policy and therefore did not have legal standing to challenge it. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit upheld that ruling in March.
The Supreme Court turned down the parents’ appeal without comment, which is often the case. Conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh said favored taking the case, also without comment, and one of the court’s most conservative and most anti-LGBTQ+ members, Justice Samuel Alito, wrote a two-page dissent in which he was joined by fellow right-winger Justice Clarence Thomas.
“This case presents a question of great and growing national importance: whether a public school district violates parents’ ‘fundamental constitutional right to make decisions concerning the rearing of’ their children … when, without parental knowledge or consent, it encourages a student to transition to a new gender or assists in that process,” Alito wrote.
“The challenged policy and associated equity training specifically encourage school personnel to keep parents in the dark about the ‘identities’ of their children, especially if the school believes that the parents would not support what the school thinks is appropriate,” he continued. “Thus, the parents’ fear that the school district might make decisions for their children without their knowledge and consent is not ‘speculative.’”
The order comes five days after the Supreme Court heard a case challenging Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for trans youth, with justices from the court’s conservative majority appearing inclined to upholding the ban.
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