Court sides with parents in dispute over California policies on transgender students

The Supreme Court on Monday night granted a request from a group of California parents to reinstate a ruling by a federal district court that prohibits schools in that state from “misleading parents about their children’s gender presentation” and that requires schools to follow parents’ instructions regarding the names and pronouns that children use there. In a seven-page order, the majority explained that the parents were likely to prevail on their claim that California’s policies violate the parents’ right to freely exercise their religion and their right to “direct the upbringing and education of their children.”

Justice Elena Kagan, joined by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, dissented from the court’s ruling. She argued that Monday’s ruling “shows, not for the first time, how our emergency docket can malfunction.”

The dispute dates back to 2023, when two teachers sued the school district, seeking an exemption from the district’s policies regarding gender and pronouns. They were later joined as plaintiffs by parents whose children socially transitioned at school (or who believed that their children socially transitioned at school).

The district court ruled for the challengers, but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit put that order on hold while the state appealed. The challengers then came to the Supreme Court, asking the justices to intervene. In a mixed ruling on Monday night, the majority handed a victory to the parents but turned down the request from the teachers.

The majority explained that the parents were ultimately likely to prevail on the merits of their claim that the state’s policies interfere with their right to freely exercise their religion. The policies are subject to the most stringent constitutional test, known as strict scrutiny, the majority wrote, because “they substantially interfere with the ‘right of parents to guide the religious development of their children.’” And they cannot pass that test, the majority continued, despite the state’s contention that the “policies advance a compelling interest in student safety and privacy” because they “cut out the primary protectors of children’s best interests: their parents.” Moreover, the majority added, parents have long had “primary authority with respect to ‘the upbringing and education of children,” including “the right not to be shut out of participation in decisions regarding their children’s mental health.”

In a seven-page dissenting opinion, Kagan criticized the court’s choice to resolve the case on the interim docket, observing that the court had “receive[d] scant and, frankly, inadequate briefing about the legal issues in dispute” and then, without holding oral argument, “grant[ed] relief by means of a terse, tonally dismissive ruling designed to conclusively resolve the dispute.”

Moreover, Kagan continued, the court could resolve the issue at the center of this case in “the regular way, on our merits docket.” She noted that, since November, the court has repeatedly considered a petition for review in a very similar case. “Why not, then, just grant” review in that case, she asked, “and decide it this coming fall?” “Our processes,” Kagan concluded, “are, in short, the hallmark of judicial probity, and alike its guarantor. There was no reason to abandon them here.”

In a four-page concurring opinion, Justice Amy Coney Barrett – joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh – pushed back against Kagan’s criticism. Barrett emphasized that the majority’s conclusion that “the parents are likely to succeed on the merits” is a “preliminary” one. And she stressed that the decision to grant interim relief “is not a sign of the Court’s ‘impatience’ to reach the merits,” but rather “reflects the Court’s judgment about the risk of irreparable harm to the parents.” If the 9th Circuit’s order is not lifted, she contended, “parents will be excluded—perhaps for years—from participating in consequential decisions about their child’s mental health and wellbeing.”

Justice Sonia Sotomayor indicated that she would have denied not only the teachers’ request, but also the parents’ request.

Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito indicated that they would have granted the teachers’ request.