By Andrew Chung
March 2 (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court blocked on Monday a series of California laws that can limit the sharing of information with parents about the gender identity of transgender public school students without the child’s permission, handing a victory to Christian parents who challenged these protections.
The justices in a 6-3 decision granted an emergency request by the challengers to reinstate a judge’s ruling that the privacy and anti-discrimination measures at issue undermined their religious and parental rights under the U.S. Constitution’s First and 14th Amendments, while litigation continues. A federal appeals court had put that ruling on hold.
The Supreme Court’s decision on Monday was powered by its conservative justices, with its three liberal members dissenting.
The court’s majority said in an unsigned opinion that California’s policies likely violated the religious beliefs of the parents about sex and gender, running afoul of First Amendment protections.
“The state argues that its policies advance a compelling interest in student safety and privacy. But those policies cut out the primary protectors of children’s best interests: their parents,” the court’s majority stated.
In addition, the majority said, the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of due process “includes the right not to be shut out of participation in decisions regarding their children’s mental health.”
The California lawsuit is one of many disputes concerning efforts to protect the privacy of transgender and gender-nonconforming students playing out across the United States.
DISPUTES OVER TRANSGENDER RIGHTS
The Supreme Court has been asked repeatedly to rule on efforts by President Donald Trump’s administration and Republican-led states to restrict the rights of transgender people.
The Supreme Court last year upheld Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming medical care for transgender minors and also let Trump ban transgender people from the military. It heard arguments on January 13 concerning state laws in Idaho and West Virginia banning transgender athletes from female sports teams, with the conservative justices appearing ready to uphold those restrictions.
California law contains several provisions, including the right to privacy under the state constitution, that the state has said could apply when transgender students object to having their gender identities disclosed to their parents or guardians, sometimes out of fear of hostility, rejection or even violence.
The challengers in a 2023 lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the provisions said the measures require public schools to facilitate “secret gender transition” and to “hide children’s expressed transgender status at school from their own parents – including religious parents.”
The Democratic-governed state has said the provisions do not actually forbid sharing information with parents, and sometimes even allow or require disclosure if not doing so would endanger the student’s health.
KAGAN SEES A ‘MALFUNCTION’
In a written dissent on Monday, Justice Elena Kagan, joined by fellow liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, said that the case presented novel legal questions and should never have been decided on the court’s expanding “emergency docket” – which, unlike the court’s regular work, is typically handled without the benefit of extensive briefing or oral arguments.
“Today’s decision shows, not for the first time, how our emergency docket can malfunction,” Kagan wrote.
Kagan said the decision to grant the parents’ due process claim also induces a “strong sense of whiplash,” given the similar claim at issue in the court’s landmark 2022 decision to overrule Roe v. Wade, which ended recognition of a woman’s constitutional right to abortion.
While Monday’s decision recognized “a parent’s right to make important decisions about her child’s health,” the 2022 decision repudiated “a woman’s right to make important decisions about her own health,” Kagan wrote.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta’s office expressed disappointment with the decision. “We remain committed to ensuring a safe, welcoming school environment for all students while respecting the crucial role parents play in students’ lives,” it said in a statement.
Peter Breen, executive vice president at the Thomas More Society, a conservative legal group that represented the plaintiffs, called Monday’s decision “groundbreaking” and said it would protect parental rights for years to come.
“No more can bureaucrats secretly facilitate a child’s gender transition while shutting out parents. California built a wall of secrecy between parents and their own children, and the Supreme Court just tore it down,” Breen said.
The lawsuit was first brought by Christian teachers from the Escondido Union School District in San Diego County, who argued that complying with the measures violated their First Amendment rights to freedom of speech and free exercise of religion.
Two devoutly Catholic married couples also sued, alleging that their children expressed themselves as transgender boys at school without the knowledge or consent of their parents, violating their religious rights and their right as parents under the 14th Amendment’s due process provision to direct the care of their children.
U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez in December ruled in favor of the plaintiffs. The San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals put Benitez’s ruling on hold in January, citing multiple errors in the judge’s analysis.
(Reporting by Andrew Chung; Editing by Will Dunham)
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