Supreme Court rejects parental challenge to school district’s transgender policy

The U.S. Supreme Court declined to take up a case involving parental rights on Monday. The Supreme Court was one vote short of approving the case for review. Wisconsin parents brought the case, alleging that a local school district’s transgender policy instructed teachers to intentionally withhold information about students from their parents. Parents Protecting Our Children, a coalition of Eau Claire parents, sued the Eau Claire Area School District in western Wisconsin in 2022 after the district introduced a policy barring teachers from informing parents of changes to their child’s sexual orientation.

A child must give a teacher permission to tell parents about changes to his or her name, pronouns, or bathroom preferences, according to the 2021 policy. The change would protect students with parents who would be unsupportive of a child’s gender identity, the district claimed. The policy also instructed teachers on drafting what the district calls student gender support plans. Those plans are designed to set protocols around participation in athletics and use of single-sex spaces, along with legal and medical procedures, according to the district. The parents’ lawsuit accused the district of claiming that parents are not entitled to personal information about their child’s identity, and instead must earn it.

The plaintiffs alleged the policy violated their parental rights under the U.S. Constitution and sued the district. A local district court ruled that the parents lacked standing to challenge the district’s policy, since the case was filed purely as a pre-emptive measure and the parents did not identify a specific instance in which their rights were violated. A federal appeals court reaffirmed the lower court’s ruling before the Supreme Court opted not to hear the case. That decision effectively allows the previous appeals ruling to stand.

Did SCOTUS explain the rejection? Justices Samuel Alito, Brett Kavanaugh, and Clarence Thomas signaled a desire to hear the case in the court’s published decision. The question of schools violating parental rights over transgender issues is a question of growing national importance, Alito wrote in the dissenting opinion, which Thomas formally joined. The justice said he would have heard the case and voiced concerns that federal courts are starting to use the question of standing to avoid ruling on contentious constitutional issues.

How have the parents responded? Luke Berg, deputy counsel at the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, represented the parental coalition and shared his disappointment at being one vote short. Declining to hear a case doesn’t mean the justices agree with a lower court’s flawed analysis of that case, he told WORLD. Berg hoped that the dissent would impact similar cases that are being filed around the country. If school districts continue to disregard parental rights, parents will continue filing cases, and hopefully, SCOTUS will eventually opt to hear one, he said.

Dig deeper: Read Liz Lykins’ report on another Wisconsin-based legal battle over transgender policy in schools.