Six justices told the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals it was wrong. In an emergency order, the Supreme Court rebuked the 9th Circuit for blocking a permanent injunction against California's gender secrecy policies, which require school districts to hide students' gender confusion from their parents and even falsely tell parents their children aren't presenting as the opposite sex at school.
The court's conservative wing fractured on whether to reinstate all or part of U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez's permanent injunction, with only Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas voting to protect teachers from compelled participation in the state's deception. But on the core question of parental rights, the majority spoke clearly and without hesitation.
The justices marveled that the 9th Circuit refused to apply "strict scrutiny," the most stringent legal standard for the government to meet, despite the fact that California's "unconsented facilitation of a child's gender transition" is a greater attack on parental rights than the "LGBTQ storybooks" at issue in Mahmoud, also subject to strict scrutiny.
California argued its policies protect student safety. The Court was unpersuaded. As the unsigned opinion put it:
Those policies cut out the primary protectors of children's best interests: their parents.
Unlike federal abortion rights, the right to direct a child's upbringing is "deeply rooted" in American history and tradition and "implicit in the concept of ordered liberty," the majority said. These are not novel legal concepts. The precedents stretch back to the Roaring Twenties and include the 1972 Amish school opt-out case Yoder. The 9th Circuit treated them as suggestions.
A majority of the Supreme Court is finally losing patience with lower courts it perceives as looking for ways around both long-established and recent precedents, tacitly answering complaints by more conservative justices that the high court was routinely ignoring rulings that flagrantly violate its precedents.
The unsigned opinion made explicit what the majority expects going forward: the right of parents not to be shut out of decisions regarding their children's mental health is constitutionally protected. That includes knowing whether a public school is facilitating a child's social gender transition behind their backs.
According to Just the News, Justice Amy Coney Barrett emphasized that Judge Benitez only imposed the permanent injunction "after a full merits process." Responding to Kagan's criticism that the unsigned opinion would be understood as the high court's final judgment, Barrett said the Court needed to issue a "general course correction" because the 9th Circuit "significantly misunderstood" Mahmoud.
Barrett, joined by Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Kavanaugh, laid out the stakes with precision:
Under California's policy, parents will be excluded, perhaps for years, from participating in consequential decisions about their child's mental health and wellbeing.
That timeline is not hypothetical. The 9th Circuit misread Benitez on the scope of the injunction, which only applies to California parents who object to the policies or seek religious exemptions, rather than all parents with children in California public schools, the SCOTUS majority said, questioning the 9th Circuit's understanding of class certification rules. In other words, the appeals court got the scope wrong, the standard of review wrong, and the precedent wrong. Three for three.
Justice Elena Kagan, joined by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, accused the majority of "throwing over [California's] policies in a slapdash way" by issuing a ruling via the so-called shadow docket. Justice Sonia Sotomayor was the only member to conclusively reject the plaintiffs' petition.
Kagan's objection is procedural, not substantive, and that distinction matters. Kagan agreed that "parents have rights" when it comes to their children's "life choices." Her complaint boils down to timing: she wanted the case to wind through the regular docket. But "the regular docket" means years of secrecy policies left intact while courts deliberate. Barrett called that out directly.
Kagan noted that "almost 40 cases raising due process and/or free exercise objections to similar school policies are currently in the judicial system." She suggested the Court should wait and take one of those cases through the normal process. But the existence of nearly 40 such cases is itself an argument for urgency, not patience. Schools across the country are running these policies right now. Children are affected right now.
The Thomas More Society, representing the plaintiffs, called this "the most significant parental rights ruling in a generation." Paul Jonna, the firm's special counsel, was more specific:
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.
Teachers Elizabeth Mirabelli and Lori Ann West originated the case, and their lawyers said the partially reinstated injunction "effectively shields teachers as well, since the class-wide parental victory prohibits the very policies that teachers were being compelled to enforce." The Court did not formally reinstate the teacher protections, but the practical effect may be the same: if schools cannot enforce the secrecy policies against parents, they cannot compel teachers to carry them out.
The Heritage Foundation put it plainly: "Schools can't play therapist or activist without parental consent. This is a huge win for constitutional principles, contrasting sharply with the liberal dissenters who sided with secrecy over transparency."
Mark Rienzi, president of religious liberty law firm Becket, framed the broader principle:
Once again, the Supreme Court has made clear that parents do not take a backseat to anyone when it comes to raising their kids, especially not government bureaucrats.
The 9th Circuit is reportedly the most overturned federal appellate court since 2007. This case fits the pattern perfectly. The appeals court reviewed a century of precedent on parental rights, considered last year's Mahmoud decision, and decided to go the other way. Six justices told them they were wrong.
The Supreme Court is scheduled to discuss applications in two related cases, Littlejohn v. School Board of Leon County and Foote v. Ludlow School Committee, during its closed-door Friday conference, with a decision on whether to hear either case coming as soon as next Monday. If the Court takes one of those cases, it could establish the standard of review for parental rights challenges to school gender policies once and for all.
George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley noted the possibility:
"Foote could allow the Court to reaffirm the fundamental rights of parents and, most importantly, clearly establish the standard for review in future cases."
This case is not an abstraction. The source material describes parents who didn't learn their daughter's middle school had been secretly transitioning her for a year. She attempted suicide. She was hospitalized. She was involuntarily rehospitalized months later. The school had been facilitating the transition since fifth grade.
California's position is that keeping parents in the dark serves the child's "safety and privacy." The Supreme Court recognized what any parent already knows: cutting parents out of their child's mental health decisions is the opposite of safety. It is the state substituting its judgment for the family's, in secret, without consent, and sometimes with devastating consequences.
Justice Neil Gorsuch was the only majority member to add no comment of his own. He didn't need to. The opinion spoke for itself.
For a generation, public schools in progressive states operated under the assumption that they knew better than parents. That the bureaucracy's therapeutic instincts outranked a mother's right to know what was happening to her child. Six justices just told them otherwise.
The 9th Circuit will hear the case on the merits. But the signal from the Supreme Court could not be clearer. Parents are not obstacles to be managed. They are the constitutionally recognized protectors of their own children. And the era of secret school transitions is ending.
