Six Supreme Court justices issued an emergency order Tuesday night that landed squarely on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals for blocking a permanent injunction against California's gender secrecy policies in schools. The message was blunt: stop ignoring a century of precedents on parental rights.
The case involves teachers Elizabeth Mirabelli and Lori Ann West, represented by the Thomas More Society, who challenged California policies requiring school districts to hide students' gender confusion from their parents. U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez issued a permanent injunction against the policies after a full merits process. The Ninth Circuit blocked that injunction early in California's appeal.
The Supreme Court reversed, and it wasn't close.
The unsigned majority opinion laid out what California's policies produced in practice. In one case, parents didn't learn their daughter's middle school had been secretly transitioning her for a year until she attempted suicide and was hospitalized. She was involuntarily rehospitalized months later. Another plaintiff's daughter has sometimes identified as a boy since fifth grade, a fact the school concealed from her parents.
The Court found that these policies "substantially interfere with the 'right of parents to guide the religious development of their children'" and amount to "unconsented facilitation of a child's gender transition." California claimed a "compelling interest in student safety and privacy" while simultaneously cutting out, in the Court's words, "the primary protectors of children's best interests: their parents."
The majority noted that the policy could be narrowed to hide gender identity only from parents who would engage in abuse. Instead, California chose a blanket rule that treats every parent as a threat. The Court affirmed, "the right not to be shut out of participation in decisions regarding their children's mental health."
One line from the unsigned opinion carries particular weight:
Everyone agrees that children's safety is the overriding equity.
The majority concluded that Benitez's injunction "promotes child safety by guaranteeing fit parents a role in some of the most consequential decisions in their children's lives." The Ninth Circuit had it exactly backward.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh, penned a concurrence that went further in explaining why the Court acted. Barrett identified "the risk of irreparable harm to the parents" as central to the emergency order and stated plainly what the policy does to families:
Under California's policy, parents will be excluded – perhaps for years – from participating in consequential decisions about their child's mental health and wellbeing.
Barrett noted that Benitez only imposed the permanent injunction "after a full merits process," rebutting any suggestion that this was a rushed outcome. She described the Court's action as a "general course correction" for the Ninth Circuit, which had "significantly misunderstood" the Supreme Court's prior ruling in Mahmoud last summer.
According to Just the News, the concurrence grounded its reasoning in substantive due process, affirming that it includes "a parent's right to raise her child, which includes the right to participate in significant decisions about her child's mental health." Barrett drew a sharp line between this right and the reasoning in Dobbs, where the Court found that abortion rights were not "deeply rooted" in American history and tradition or "implicit in the concept of ordered liberty." Parental rights are. They trace back to precedents from the Roaring Twenties and the 1972 Amish school opt-out case, Yoder.
That distinction matters. The left has spent years arguing that Dobbs opened the door to stripping away other rights. This ruling closes that door on parental authority with a deadbolt.
Justice Elena Kagan, joined by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, dissented. Kagan accused the majority of "throwing over [California's] policies in a slapdash way." She pointed to what she called a "carbon copy" case already in the pipeline and argued the Court should have waited:
By recent count, almost 40 cases raising due process and/or free exercise objections to similar school policies are currently in the judicial system (with several recently decided by appellate courts), so this Court would not have to wait long.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor was the only member to conclusively reject the plaintiffs' petition entirely. Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas voted to protect teachers from compelled participation in the state's deception. Justice Neil Gorsuch was the only majority member to add no comment of his own.
Kagan's argument boils down to procedural patience. Wait for the right case. Wait for the right vehicle. Wait while more parents are kept in the dark about what schools are doing to their children. The majority decided that parents facing the loss of constitutional rights can't wait "during the potentially protracted appellate process." Given that one family didn't find out until their daughter was hospitalized after a suicide attempt, the urgency seems self-evident.
The Ninth Circuit is reportedly the most overturned federal appellate court since 2007. This case illustrates why. The Supreme Court found that the appeals court brushed aside binding precedent from Mahmoud, handed down just last summer. That's not a difference of interpretation. That's defiance.
The Court referenced another case in the pipeline as well, supporting a petition to overturn the Ninth Circuit's dismissal in a Washington state-related parental rights challenge. George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley observed that the pending Foote case, which has been before the Court for several months, could go even further:
Foote could allow the Court to reaffirm the fundamental rights of parents and, most importantly, clearly establish the standard for review in future cases.
The pattern is consistent. Lower courts, particularly the Ninth Circuit, treat parental rights as an inconvenience to be managed rather than a constitutional guarantee to be respected. The Supreme Court keeps correcting them. The corrections keep not taking.
Paul Jonna, special counsel for the Thomas More Society, framed the ruling in its broadest terms:
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.
The Heritage Foundation called it a clear message that "schools can't play therapist or activist without parental consent" and characterized it as "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, put it more simply:
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.
Just last month, a Colorado parental rights group exposed a school district engaged in similar secrecy. These policies aren't confined to California. They are embedded in school systems across the country, operating on the assumption that educators know better than mothers and fathers, and that concealment is care.
The Supreme Court just told the lower courts, in terms that should not require repetition, that the Constitution disagrees. A child attempted suicide. Her parents didn't know why. The school did. That's not a policy dispute. That's a moral failing dressed in bureaucratic language, and six justices made sure it didn't stand.
