US Supreme Court Won’t Hear Parents’ Challenge To Maryland Schools’ Secret Gender Transitioning Policy
The Court declined to address an issue that is “roiling parents and school districts from Maine to California”: Do secret gender transitioning policies violate parents’ fundamental rights?
Yesterday, the United States Supreme Court refused to review a Fourth Circuit court’s decision that a group of Maryland parents had no standing to challenge their schools’ secret gender transitioning policy.
We covered the appellate court’s ruling last year here:
As we wrote then, the 2-1 decision marked the latest in a series of losses in federal court for parents suing to protect their children from such policies that permit schools to encourage students’ gender transitioning behind their backs.
The Montgomery County school system has adopted gender identity guidelines that mirror those in other schools we covered here.
As with other schools’ policies, all this “social transitioning” takes place without the knowledge or consent of the students’ parents. For parents deemed to be “unsupportive”—again, based on the student’s word—Montgomery policy authorizes the school to continue to withhold information from them about their children’s new identity.
And for teachers who aren’t sure how to keep up this charade, the school offers more guidance:
“[s]chools should seek to minimize the use of permission slips and other school-specific forms that require disclosure of a student’s gender or use gendered terminology” and … “[u]nless the student or parent/guardian has specified otherwise, when contacting the parent/guardian of a transgender student, [Montgomery County] school staff members should use the student’s legal name and pronoun that correspond to the student’s sex assigned at birth.”
The Maryland parents’ case reached the Fourth Circuit when they appealed the district court ruling dismissing their lawsuit as a challenge to their schools’ curriculum over which they have no say.
On appeal, the school board challenged for the first time the parents’ standing to bring their lawsuit in federal court, arguing they failed to allege the type of injury required to show it.
The majority agreed. They said that the parents had only challenged the part of the “parental preclusion” policy that permits schools to withhold information about a student’s gender identity from parents. And because they had not alleged that their children had gender support plans, were transgender or were even struggling with issues of gender identity, they failed to allege the injury necessary to support standing i.e., the constitutional right to sue.
Well, we wondered at the time, maybe that’s because the school is keeping the parents in the dark about whether their kids have “gender support plans” in the first place. How could they ever allege the injury necessary to show standing if they have to wait to know what they can’t ever know because the school is hiding it from them—a point the parents raised in their petition for writ of certiorari filed last year: By the time one of their children experiences gender dysphoria, the school may already have begun transitioning them, and by then the damage is done, and all without the parents’ knowledge, much less consent.
“Living under this Policy affects them now,” the parents argued in their petition, citing Judge Niemeyer’s dissent in the court below. He wrote that the parents do have standing, both because they were suffering current injury and because they are the targets of threatened injury, as the school system was currently enforcing the policy throughout its system and at every age level.
We can only speculate why the Supreme Court denied the parents’ application for cert., because there was no accompanying comment or opinion. It’s possible the standing question overly complicated the Court’s consideration of what should otherwise have been a straightforward issue: whether secret social transitioning policies violate the parents’ fundamental right to direct the care and upbringing of their children.
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Comments
There’s only one answer left, pull your kids out of those schools that don’t respect your parental rights
That would be public schools for the most part, so volt against all public school funding, campaign to get others to do the same.
vote
Pull your kids out of government schools, period.
And don’t assume that a private school won’t do the same thing.
Bullsh-t. Not if the private school is a Bible believing Christian School.
OMG for once I up voted JR … and I agree with him … the world is ending soon …
but I agree … private Christian school …
Not paying any attention to JR until he apologizes for repeatedly slandering alaskabob for pointing out the fact that the US State Department sent “condolences” to Iran on the death of Raisi.
After “he” was proven wrong “he” didn’t admit “his” mistake but ran away like the little cowardly sissy we’ve always known “him” to be.
These parents also need to run for the school board. A school board takeover would allow repealing the policy.
as long as the schools get your money
THEY DONT WANT YOUR MAGA KIDS!!
THEY WANT YOU TO TAKE THE KIDS
the “loss” of any revenue would be offset with another lefty scheme
you have to LEGISLATE IT so the money no longer goes to the schools
GOP??
WHERE ARE YOU!!!??!!??!
Another chickensh*t move by the USSC. They don’t want to have to rule on this subject and find in favor of the parents, so, like the election fraud stuff, they’ll go “la la la” and put their fingers in their ears.
If parents don’t have standing where their underage kids are concerned, WHO DOES?!
actually is a local issue
come on people lets see who wins when parents actually get off the social media and clean up the schools
or take your tax money away from them
destroycommunism said: “come on people lets see who wins when parents actually get off the social media and clean up the schools.”
Good point. So what he hell have you ever done to get off of social media and clean up the schools.? All we have heard here on LI is your rants.
“All we have heard here on LI is your rants.”
You mean like threatening to beat up people who “falsely” accused the DoS of expressing condolences for Raisi?
So, destroycommunism, have you ever had the guts to run for political office, even if it’s just for the school board? I think not. All you ever do on LI here is moan from the peanut section. I have run for political office as a conservative Republican, and I can assure you that it is hell. But I got elected. So what in the hell have you ever done????
Insane …. Why!!!Dear God
They are the enemy of the people
Stick a small recording device inside your child’s backpack. Turn it “on” when the child goes to school. Then I guess download the audio and play it back however seems right, but you might stumble on something.
I don’t see how this is illegal, and if it is, I doubt the child would face consequences so why would I care? Let those queer (they use this word) teachers try to put me in jail.
It’s a crime in states like Florida that require two-party consent.
I think that’s only for phone conversations, but I could be wrong.
It seems the US Supreme Court is not willing to recognize the rights of parents to manage the education of their children who attend the government schools. This is more of a recognition of reality than an act of cowardice.
Parents should stop waiting for miracles and get their children out.
Let’s see…
“It takes a village.”
“They’re not your kids; they’re our kids.”
And now, “Sorry, parents, no standing for you!”
Well, that’s clear, and BTW your job is to pay for their mission molding the kids to their specs.
Make sure your kids know that other kids may be mentally ill and that it may be a virus they could catch. Parents should know that the schools can be sued for providing unauthorized health care whether physical or mental ,
We’ll just have to wait for Maryland to trans a child behind her parents’ back before we find out if the state is permitted to groom your children into irreversible transgenderism.
“We can only speculate why the Supreme Court denied the parents’ application for cert., because there was no accompanying comment or opinion.”
Well, yeah, there is… an old one of long standing. And I know for sure that I have it somewhere on my laptop, because I’ve quoted it multiple times… but tonight my search fu (or my local search function) is failing me. Anyway, I’ll try paraphrasing it and hope somebody maybe recognizes it:
It’s cold comfort, but keep in mind that a boom in subject activity my very well push the subject higher in the Court’s urgency ratings and lead to acceptance in the near future… also, that such a boom will probably grant us the boon of being able to choose an example so invidious (because Democrats never know when to stop pushing) that the outcome will be pretty much foreordained.