The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) has issued a landmark ruling that should strike fear into the minds of vigilante school boards across America. In Mirabelli v. Bonta, the Court held that a California law prohibiting schools from disclosing their child’s claimed “gender identity” to parents at school violated parents’ free exercise rights under the First Amendment to the Constitution and their substantive due process rights under the Fourteenth Amendment.
The Supreme Court ruled that California’s policy of socially transitioning children to another gender at school without parental consent likely violates the free exercise rights of those who “have sincerely held religious beliefs about sex and gender, and feel a religious obligation to raise their children in accordance with those beliefs.” The Court further noted that this “unauthorized facilitation of a child’s gender transition exceeds the indoctrination of LGBTQ storybooks” that the Court addressed last summer in Mahmoud v. Taylor. The Court also ruled in the Mahmoud case that Montgomery County Public Schools violated the rights of objecting parents. That school district paid $1.5 million to settle the case.
SCOTUS also made clear that California’s policy requiring schools to keep a student’s “gender identity” secret from parents likely violated their established “rights to direct the education and training of their children” and that the denial of these rights “constitutes irreparable harm.”
The importance of this decision for parents cannot be overstated. Schools across America now must obtain parental consent before facilitating a child’s social transition to another gender. In other words, if a student wants to be addressed by opposite-sex pronouns at school or use the opposite-sex bathroom or locker room, the school must obtain parental permission. Schools can no longer hide or encourage facilitating a student’s gender transition from parents and pretend it is legal.
Anyone who has been paying attention to what has happened in America’s public schools over the past five years knows that California is not the only place where K-12 school districts have actively hidden a student’s social transition from parents. For example, in Virginia, Loudoun County Public Schools’ Regulation 8040 states that “[a] Students’ 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 critical for transgender students who have families who do not support or affirm their gender identity,” and that when students “do not want their parents to know about their gender identity [] Schools must address this on a case-by-case basis.”
Applying the Supreme Court’s decision in Mirabelli to this policy leads to only one conclusion: it is blatantly unconstitutional. School boards that continue to enforce this policy will do so at their own risk, which could arguably also mean that school board members and other officials may be sued for damages in their individual capacities. And to be clear: the risk of lawsuits is not limited to parents whose children have undergone a social transition at school. Rather, as the Court made clear, “parents who object to the challenged policy or seek religious exemptions” may sue “because they are subjects of the challenged policy.” This means that any parent whose school district has a policy like Loudoun’s can sue individually or as part of a class action for deprivation of their free exercise and substantive due process rights.
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The Mirabelli decision provides parents with robust rights to require schools to obtain parental consent before referring to their own child by opposite-sex pronouns, renaming them, or using an opposite-sex bathroom or locker room. And it doesn’t take a huge leap to argue that parents’ free exercise and substantive due process rights to direct the upbringing and education of their children can also be violated when someone else’s child starts using opposite-sex locker rooms or communal restrooms.
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Consider a boy who is allowed to use a girls’ locker room as part of his social transition at school. Parents of the girls who use that locker room may well have religious, philosophical, or safety concerns about their daughters dressing up with members of the opposite sex. Unless the school informs parents that their daughters will be exposed to a male student in their locker room before this happens, the girls’ parents are denied the opportunity to take any action they deem necessary to direct the upbringing and education of their children. That’s exactly what’s happening in Loudoun County.
Unfortunately, even with the clear ruling of the United States Supreme Court, some of America’s woke school boards and administrators will likely continue to violate the Constitution. They should be taken to court and forced to quit and then pay dearly for their intransigence. The SCOTUS ruling reaffirms what the Constitution says and what legal precedent has confirmed: parents have a constitutional right to raise their children. Parents have the legal authority and power to do exactly this – and they should use it.
