BURSTThe Supreme Court on Monday declined to intervene in a case involving a group of Wisconsin parents who sued their children’s school district over a policy meant to support transgender students, letting two lower court rulings dismissing the case stand.
In a brief, unsigned order, the justices denied the parents’ request to review the lower court decisions, which conceded that while parents may have “genuine concerns” about a western Wisconsin school district’s gender support plan that allows transgender students to use a different name and pronouns at school without their family’s consent, the parents involved in the lawsuit lack standing to challenge the policy because none of them has a transgender child.
In a written dissent, Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas said they would have heard the case regardless.
“The challenged policy and associated equity training specifically encourage school personnel to keep parents in the dark about the ‘identities’ of their children, especially if the school believes that the parents would not support what the school thinks is appropriate. Thus, the parents’ fear that the school district might make decisions for their children without their knowledge and consent is not ‘speculative.’ They are merely taking the school district at its word,” they wrote. Justice Brett Kavanaugh also said he would have granted the parents’ petition but did not join in the dissent.
The high court declined to take up a similar case out of Maryland in May.
The parents — represented by the conservative groups America First Legal, the organization founded by Stephen Miller, who is President-elect Trump’s deputy chief of staff for policy, and the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty — sued the Eau Claire Area School District in 2022 over its administrative guidance on supporting transgender students, which they argued infringes on their freedom of religion and violates their constitutional right to make decisions about their children.
The guidance, adopted by the district in 2021, encourages school staff to work with trans and gender-nonconforming students on a case-by-case basis to establish a gender support plan that fosters “inclusive and welcoming environments that are free from discrimination, harassment, and bullying,” according to a copy of the document made public by the lawsuit.
Support plans may involve allowing students to participate in sports or use facilities such as restrooms and locker rooms that match their gender identity, in addition to using gender-affirming names and pronouns.
The school district’s policy does not require staff to inform parents about the changes but does not expressly forbid them from doing so.
“Some transgender, non-binary, and/or gender-nonconforming students are not ‘open’ at home for reasons that may include safety concerns or lack of acceptance. School personnel should speak with the student first before discussing a student’s gender nonconformity or transgender status with the student’s parent/guardian,” the guidance states.
“As any parent knows, parental authority includes the right (and the solemn responsibility) to say no to children’s often short-sighted desires when necessary to protect them from themselves,” attorneys for the parents, referred to collectively in court documents as “Parents Protecting our Children,” wrote in the petition to the Supreme Court in June.
The Eau Claire Area School District has said the parents’ case “grossly mischaracterizes” the district’s guidance and “relies on its own speculative interpretation rather than what the document says.”
A student’s gender support plan is a pupil record that is always available to their parents and is “not a privileged document between the student and the school district,” Ronald S. Stadler, an attorney for the school district, wrote in court filings.
“There is no case or controversy here. Petitioner’s members have not suffered any actual harm and the remote possibility that they might suffer harm in the future is far too dependent upon a highly attenuated chain of possibilities that may never occur,” Stadler wrote.
Conservative groups and parents across the country are fighting legal battles over similar policies, with mixed results.
Laws adopted by eight Republican-led states require schools to notify parents if their child identifies as transgender, according to the Movement Advancement Project, an LGBTQ rights think tank. In July, California became the first state to ban public schools from “outing” LGBTQ students to their parents without their permission.
The California law, hailed by LGBTQ rights groups as a critical step forward for shoring up protections for transgender students, drew the ire of conservative figures such as tech billionaire Elon Musk and said he would pull his businesses out of the state because of the bill.
At least one Southern California school district has challenged the law in court, and the city of Huntington Beach, also in Southern California, sued the state’s Democratic governor, attorney general and top education official over the law in September.