This morning, the Supreme Court announced it will not intervene in a case brought by two parents claiming they had a right to be told—and to object—when their school “socially transitioned” their child to another sex.
We covered the parents’ case, Foote v. Ludlow from the beginning here:
Stephen Foote and Marissa Silvestri brought their original lawsuit against the Ludlow, Massachusetts, school committee in 2022 after they learned from one of its teachers that their 11-year-old daughter had secretly become “genderqueer.”
If not for that one brave teacher—later fired for coming forward—according to the complaint, the parents might never have known: Under the school’s non-disclosure policy, when a student asks to be called by a new name and pronouns of a different sex, staff members must keep it a secret from the parents, unless they have the student’s consent.
The parents claimed the policy violated their constitutional rights to raise and make medical and mental-health care decisions for their child.
In February 2025, the Court of Appeals for the First Circuit rejected their case. The court said the school’s non-disclosure protocols were “curricular and administrative” decisions over which the parents had no say.
Last year, the parents urged the Supreme Court to reject the First Circuit’s “flawed view” of their rights—and stop schools from “transing” children behind their parents’ backs.
Today’s announcement comes as a disappointment to parents whose hopes were raised last month by the Court’s decision in another gender-secrecy case, Mirabelli v. Bonta. In a preliminary ruling, the Court held California’s non-disclosure policies likely violate parental rights to direct the upbringing and education of their children.
Parents’ advocacy groups have long argued that public schools are driving the national transgender crisis. More than 1,000 school districts have reportedly adopted similar gender-secrecy policies—policies that put students on a path to permanent, life-altering medical transitioning, potentially locking in what would otherwise be a passing phase in a child’s development.
The Court has been asked to wade into the conflict over gender-secrecy policies several times in the past. In 2024, it declined a petition in a similar lawsuit over a Wisconsin school’s gender identity plan. Justice Alito dissented, lamenting the missed opportunity to take up a question “of great and growing national importance”—a question that remains for the Court to finally answer.
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