SCOTUS Finally Cracks Down On The Schools Secretly Transing Kids
Peter Breen
The Supreme Court has reminded the country that no school bureaucracy can override parents’ fundamental rights.
On Monday evening, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a policy currently embedded in more than a thousand school districts nationwide: hiding children’s so-called “gender transitions” from their parents. The 6-3 ruling in Mirabelli v. Bonta restored a class-wide permanent injunction against California’s statewide concealment regime. But the decision reaches far beyond California. Every school in America that maintains a policy of keeping secrets from families about their children’s mental health is now on constitutional notice.
The case began with two schoolteachers who refused to lie. Heading into the 2022-2023 school year, Elizabeth Mirabelli and Lori Ann West received a list of seven students who had requested new names or pronouns — the parents of six of those students had no clue about the change. Teachers were expected to use the new identities and say nothing. If a parent asked, they were to deflect or deceive. Both Mirabelli and West, former teachers of the year in their school district, refused. They faced termination for their honesty.
Thomas More Society filed suit in April 2023 on their behalf. What we uncovered went far beyond one school: The California Department of Education had built a statewide infrastructure of training materials, legal guidance, and model policies that redefined student “privacy” to mean shutting out parents. Nearly 600 districts across California adopted those policies. The attorney general enforced them.
The system applied to children as young as two and contained no exception for parents who asked directly, for children in crisis, or for families of faith. Principals pointed to the state’s website and told parents and teachers alike: “It’s the law.”
The human cost was staggering. One family in our case did not learn their seventh-grade daughter had been presenting as a boy at school until she attempted suicide, was rushed to a local medical center, and then quickly moved to a psychiatric hospital three hours from home. Every teacher at the school misled the parents: