In early March, the United States Supreme Court in Mirabelli v. Bonta dramatically changed the balance of power between the ideologically driven bureaucrats who run America’s public schools and the parents and students they are designed to serve. The court was unmistakably clear – as it was last year in Mahmoud v. Taylor – that parents have a fundamental right to raise and educate their children. Period. Schools may not facilitate a student’s ‘gender transition’ without prior notification and parental consent.
Just days after Mirabelli, the left-leaning Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled unanimously in Anderson v. Crouch that West Virginia’s decision to exclude gender reassignment surgery from Medicaid coverage did not violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Relying on the Supreme Court’s landmark 2025 decision in United States v. Skrmetti, the Fourth Circuit ruled that West Virginia’s Medicaid program did not discriminate on the basis of gender, but was a medically based policy applied equally to both genders seeking certain treatments for gender dysphoria.
The court further ruled that Medicaid did not discriminate based on a person’s claimed transgender status: A person – even one claiming to be transgender – could still get coverage for a hysterectomy to treat uterine cancer, but not for the same procedure to treat gender dysphoria.
The ruling in Anderson is monumental. Unlike Skrmetti, who focused only on the ban on medical treatments for gender dysphoria in children, Anderson also applies to adults. This decision also foreshadows the inevitable collapse of the destructive, ideological regime in public education that forces women to share bathrooms, locker rooms, and athletic competitions with men.
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Protesters gather outside the Supreme Court as it hears arguments over state laws banning transgender girls and women from playing on school athletic teams, Tuesday, Jan. 13, 2026, in Washington. (Jose Luis Magana/AP)
After all, policies that require intimate spaces and sports to be segregated on the basis of biological sex apply equally to both sexes—precisely the logic that the Fourth Circuit endorsed in upholding West Virginia’s Medicaid exclusion.
This policy does not exclude individuals who claim to be transgender. No student, regardless of motivation, may use a locker room or restroom, or play on a sports team designated for the opposite sex. The same rule applies to a boy who seeks access to the girls’ toilets because he is afraid of bullying as to a boy who wants to use the girls’ room because he thinks he is a girl.
Certainly, common sense policy dictates separate bathrooms, locker rooms, and sports teams for men and women, just as West Virginia’s Medicaid restriction in Anderson is based on common sense policy that states have a legitimate, evidence-based interest in controlling Medicaid costs and ensuring medical necessity that is not motivated by sex discrimination.
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Also telling is the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals’ decision less than a year ago in Roe v. Critchfield. That appeals court, hardly a bastion of legal conservatism, ruled that Idaho’s law requiring students to use bathrooms and locker rooms consistent with their biological sex violates neither the Equal Protection Clause nor Title IX of the Civil Rights Act.
These important decisions were not made in a vacuum. Before the end of June, the Supreme Court will issue its ruling in the case of West Virginia v. BPJ, which will address the question of whether a state violates the Equal Protection Clause of Title IX by segregating sports teams based on gender.
The smart money says the court will answer in the negative and possibly indicate, directly or indirectly, that toilets and changing rooms can also be separated on that basis. Such a ruling would be more than welcome, as it would allow states to pass legislation protecting women’s sports and private spaces without the constant threat of lawsuits from the ACLU and related advocacy groups.
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Nevertheless, a favorable Supreme Court ruling, even if it is a major blow to the transgender agenda in public schools, may not end the war for sanity. Instead, solidly blue states will likely continue to impose policies that take away students’ privacy and security, even though they can no longer credibly claim that federal law forces them to do so.
Parents and students will continue to see situations like the one in New Richmond, Wisconsin, where school administrators told girls that if they were not comfortable sharing a bathroom or locker room with someone of the opposite sex, the girls should be the ones to find a private alternative.
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This policy does not exclude individuals who claim to be transgender. No student, regardless of motivation, may use a locker room or restroom, or play on a sports team designated for the opposite sex.
Fortunately, the Trump administration has taken enforcement actions against school districts across the country — including New Richmond and several districts in Northern Virginia — on the grounds that their policies constitute sex discrimination under Title IX.
But federal enforcement alone will not be enough to end this state of affairs once and for all. Students and their families must seize the changing legal landscape and apply maximum pressure. Students and parents must always be vigilant, question school policies, and be prepared to take school districts to court for violating sex-based rights guaranteed to students by the Equal Protection Clause and Title IX.
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Parents have the cherished right to raise their children, and children do not give up their rights when they walk through the school doors. The time to win this battle is now, and the opportunity has never been greater.
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