Battle for parental rights at school gets certified

When Escondido Union School District in California required teachers to call students by names and pronouns that did not match their sex—and hide these changes from parents—two middle school teachers pushed back.

As Christians, Lori Ann West and Elizabeth Mirabelli believe that God creates people as male and female and that it is morally wrong to conceal students’ information from parents. The teachers, who have nearly 60 years of work in education between them, began a legal fight against the policy two years ago, defending their speech and religious rights.

On Wednesday, a judge raised the stakes by certifying their case as a class-action lawsuit. Now, a ruling will affect not only West and Mirabelli but also more than 300,000 California public school teachers and the parents of more than 5 million California public school students.

A ruling in the teachers’ favor could ensure California can’t force teachers to lie to parents, and that parents aren’t kept in the dark about their kids, said Paul Jonna, special counsel for Thomas More Society, which represents the plaintiffs.

The district’s policy, which mirrors policies the California Department of Education recommends, mandates that if a student requests to use a different name or pronouns that differ from his or her biological sex, teachers must comply as part of a “social transition.”

The policy also forbids teachers from telling parents about the social transition unless the student permits it. If a parent asked teachers whether their child had socially transitioned, teachers were told to respond, “The inquiry is outside of the scope of the intent of their interaction,” according to West and Mirabelli’s lawsuit. The district required them to tell parents they could only discuss “information regarding the student’s behavior as it relates to school, class rules, assignments, etc.” The teachers had “no room for discussion, polite disagreement, or even questioning whether the child is sincere or acting on a whim,” the lawsuit stated.

Mirabelli and West, both previously named teacher of the year in the district, sought a religious accommodation to the policy. While the school partially accommodated them—allowing them to call students by their names instead of the biologically incorrect pronouns during the school day—it still required them to deceive parents.

Mirabelli and West sued in April 2023, arguing the policy violated their free speech and hurt parental rights. In September 2023, they won a “very significant” preliminary injunction, Jonna said. A U.S. District Court judge called the school’s policy a “trifecta of harm” against students, parents, and teachers. While the ruling protected Mirabelli and West, Jonna said that California doubled down on ensuring schools across the state couldn’t inform parents about students’ social transitioning at school.

“They call it forced outing, and that’s a mischaracterization. It’s just truthful communication,” Jonna said. “Scrapes and bruises, going to the nurse’s office—parents are informed about a host of things. So this is just the obvious thing that parents should also be aware of.”

A year later, Mirabelli and West expanded their suit and sought to open it up to fellow teachers or others with similar concerns. The suit added several plaintiffs, including another California school district that wants to be transparent with parents and several parents whose children “socially transitioned” without their knowledge while at school.

In last week’s ruling, U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez granted their class certification, noting that an ultimate ruling in the case could “achieve systemic changes to the California Department of Education.” The decision comes just one month before a scheduled hearing in the case where Benitez will consider whether California’s gender transition policies violate constitutional rights.

Jonna said that because of the previous favorable preliminary injunction, he feels “pretty confident” about the ultimate ruling in this case. “The facts are so overwhelmingly in our favor,” he said. “The outcomes are clearly better for kids when the parents are aware [of social transitions]. It’s very damaging for a kid to have an identity at school that is different from their identity at home.”

If the plaintiffs win, it could shut down other California school policies like Escondido’s, said Brad Jacob, a constitutional law expert at Regent University School of Law. But if they lose, it could make it harder for others to bring similar cases. “Then none of those people gain anything, and in fact, the other parents who fall in this group may be prohibited from trying the same lawsuit because they already have lost the adjudication as part of part of the class,” Jacob said.

Yet Jacob believes the parents and teachers are likely to win. Courts have held for decades that parents have a right to direct the upbringing of their children, he noted.

While a ruling in this case is important, it would affect only California. But Vincent Wagner, an attorney at Alliance Defending Freedom’s Center for Parental Rights, said this issue has a nationwide scope and will likely work its way to the Supreme Court. He noted several justices have already expressed interest in weighing in on it.

Last Tuesday, the high court turned down a petition to review a case from a group of parents in Colorado who challenged a similar school policy. Justice Samuel Alito said the court turned down the case for procedural reasons. But he, along with Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch, acknowledged the importance of answering the questions the case brought up. “The troubling—and tragic—allegations in this case underscore the ‘great and growing national importance’ of the question that these parent petitioners present,” Alito wrote in a statement.

In December, the court denied a similar petition from a group of Wisconsin parents, and again, several justices noted the need to rule on this issue.

Wagner is hopeful the Supreme Court will take up a case on school gender transition policies soon. He noted that ADF appealed a similar case from Massachusetts to the Supreme Court in July.

“We’ve got other cases pending in Houston, Texas, [and] the Grand Rapids, Mich., area. We’ve got cases related to these policies that we’ve had in Virginia and Indiana, [so it’s] just been all over,” Wagner said. “It really has swept the nation in a troubling way.”