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California’s murky gender policies took a hit from the U.S. Supreme Court this week in a decision that may pave the way for future parental rights wins in America.
Amid a lengthy court battle, an emergency application filed by the Thomas More Society in Mirabelli v. Bonta resulted in a 6-3 decision from SCOTUS that found California schools’ “secret” gender transitions – school-led gender transitions for children, without parental knowledge – is likely a violation of parents’ rights under the Free Exercise Clause and Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
“The Supreme Court has told California and every state in the nation in no uncertain terms: you cannot secretly transition a child behind a parent’s back,” said Thomas More Society Special Counsel Paul M. Jonna in a statement. “The Court’s landmark reaffirmation of substantive due process, its vindication of religious liberty, and its approval of class-wide relief together set a historic precedent that will dismantle secret gender transition policies across the country.”
The ruling directly affects the “SAFETY Act” in California, which prohibited school boards from passing resolutions that would have required school staff to notify parents of gender-related issues about their own children, like gender transitioning, per EdSource. The court’s decision blocks enforcement of the law for now.
Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the legislation into law in 2024.
According to the Thomas More Society, this ruling restores a class action injunction against California “for parents across the state who object to the state’s directives requiring schools to conceal children’s gender transitions from their own parents, facilitate those transitions without parental knowledge or consent, and compel teachers to actively deceive families.”
According to the decision, the unsigned majority noted, “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.”
Further, while California has argued that students have a right to privacy on the issue of their own gender identity, SCOTUS leaned toward parental authority on this issue.
They wrote, “The State’s interest in safety could be served by a policy that allows religious exemptions while precluding gender-identity disclosure to parents who would engage in abuse. For these reasons, the parents who object to the California policies on free exercise grounds are likely to succeed on the merits. The same is true for the subclass of parents who object to those policies on due process grounds. Under long-established precedent, parents—not the State—have primary authority with respect to ‘the upbringing and education of children.'”