WASHINGTON – TheSupreme Courton March 2 backed a federal district court's ruling that parents have a right to be told if their child changes their name,or pronouns they're using in school.
The ruling is now back in effect in California after it had been put on hold, the first time theSupreme Courthas gotten involved in challenges across the country over how schools are handling students' gender transitions.
In 2024, California became the first state to ban school districts from requiring that staff notify parents of their child's gender identification change.
Four California parents and four teachers represented by a Catholic legal group say the state is requiring schools to hide children's transgender status from their parents, a violation of the parents' and teaches' constitutional rights.
One set of parents said they were not told that their junior-high daughter was being treated as male at school for most of a year. The other parents said they were lied to by their daughter's teachers about how she was being referred to at school.
In December, U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez in San Diego said parents have a constitutional right to be informed if their child expresses "gender incongruence" at school and barred educators from intentionally keeping gender transition information from parents. Teachers also cannot "socially transition a child over their parent's objection," the judge said.
"When it comes to a student's change in gender identity, California state policymakers apparently do not trust parents to do the right thing for their child," Benitez wrote.
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The San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals paused that order while the litigation continues. The appeals court said the order was too sweeping and likely wrong in concluding that the parents' rights were violated under the Fourteenth Amendment's due process clause, which courts have interpreted as guaranteeing fundamental parental rights. California does not "categorically forbid disclosure of information about students' gender identities without student consent," a panel of three circuit judges wrote.
The Thomas More Society, the legal group representing the challengers, sought emergency help from the Supreme Court. They argued the appeals court should have followed the logic of the high court's2025 rulingthat backed a parent's right to remove their child from the classroom when storybooks with LGBTQ+ themes were being read.
"California's policies unquestionably interfere with parents' ability to direct the religious upbringing of their children," lawyers for the California parents wrote in a filing about the state's policies for dealing with transgender students.
Lawyers for the state said it's the district judge who didn't follow Supreme Court precedent when he issued an overly broad order despite the court's2025 decisionlimiting courts' ability to universally pause rules.
The judge's order allows for no exceptions, even for extreme cases where the student could "suffer physical or mental abuse" if parents are told about their gender identity or expression, California Attorney General Rob Bonta wrote in a filing.
"Efforts to balance parental interests and the needs of transgender students," Bonta said, "raise complex questions that policymakers across the country continue to weigh."
If that's California's way of weighing the needs of both sides, the challengers responded, then "California `balances' the parent's interests like McDonald's balances the cow's."
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY:Supreme Court backs CA parents' right to be told about trans students