The (SCOTUS) issued a landmark ruling that should strike fear into woke school boards across America. In Mirabelli v. Bonta, the Court held that a California law preventing schools from disclosing to parents their childs claimed “gender identity” at school violated parents free exercise rights under the Constitutions First Amendment and their substantive due process rights under the Fourteenth Amendment.
The Supreme Court determined that children to a different gender at school without likely violates the free exercise rights of those who have “sincere religious beliefs about sex and gender, and feel a religious obligation to raise their children in accordance with those beliefs.” The Court went on to note that this “unconsented facilitation of a childs gender transition is greater than the indoctrination of LGBTQ story books” that the Court addressed last summer in Mahmoud v. Taylor. The Court similarly found in Mahmoud that Montgomery County Public Schools violated the rights of objecting parents. That school district paid out $1.5 million to settle the case.
SCOTUS also made clear that Californias policy requiring schools to keep a students “gender identity” secret from parents likely violated their well-established “rights to direct the upbringing and education of their children” and that the denial of these rights “constitutes irreparable harm.”Â
The importance of this decision for parents cannot be overstated. Schools across America must now request parental consent before facilitating a childs social transition to a different sex. In other words, if a student wants to be addressed at school by pronouns of the opposite sex or use the bathroom or locker room of the opposite sex, the school must get parental consent. Schools can no longer hide or abet the facilitation of a students gender transition from parents and pretend it is lawful.
Anyone who has been paying attention to what has been going on in Americas public schools over the last five years knows that California is not the only place where K-12 school districts have been actively hiding a students social transition from parents. For example, in Virginia,  Regulation 8040 states that “[a] students gender identity or transgender status should not be shared without the students consent.” The districts teacher training documents state that “privacy and confidentiality are critical for transgender students who have family that do not support or affirm their gender identity,” and that when students “do not want their parents to know about their gender identity [] schools should address this on a case-by-case basis.”Â
Applying the Supreme Courts holding in Mirabelli to those policies leads to only one conclusion â they are blatantly unconstitutional. School boards that continue to maintain these policies will do so at their own peril, which arguably could include school board members and other officials being sued in their individual capacity and for punitive damages. And to be clear, the risk of litigation is not limited to parents whose children have been socially transitioned at school. Rather, as the Court made clear, “parents who object to the challenged policies or seek religious exemptions” have standing to sue “because they are objects of the challenged policy.” That means that any parent whose school district has a policy like Loudouns can sue, either individually or as part of a class action, for deprivation of their rights.
The Mirabelli decision provides robust rights for parents to demand that schools seek parental consent before their own child is referred to by opposite-sex pronouns, a different name, or uses a bathroom or locker room of the opposite sex. And, it doesnt require a huge leap to argue that parents free exercise and substantive due process rights to direct the upbringing and education of their children can also be violated when someone elses child begins using locker rooms or common
