SCOTUS Denies Trans Kids Right to Privacy in California
The Supreme Court issued an unsigned “emergency” intervention in a California court case about whether or not school districts should be allowed to force educators to out trans kids to their parents.
by Aly Gibbs
“Parental rights” strike again, this time in the supposed liberal haven of California.
There’s a history of legislative attacks against transgender children in the form of forcibly outing them to their parents should they make any attempt to deviate from their gender assigned at birth by choosing to be addressed using a new name and pronouns. Often a part of what’s known as “social transition,” simply asking to be addressed in a way that makes them happy should be perfectly acceptable to conservatives, don’t you think? It’s non-invasive, it requires no medicines or surgeries (which almost never happen anyway), and it doesn’t necessarily change a child’s day to day life… besides effecting “a general improvement in mood, self-esteem, and social and family relationships” in young social transitioners.
Unfortunately, “for the children” has always been a duplicitous battle cry. They want our kids, trans kids, dead.
The Monday shadow docket decision from the Supreme Court (“emergency” rulings, typically unsigned and circumventing the usual expectations of a court) temporarily undoes 2024 legislation that banned forced outing protocols at California schools. To be clear, there has never been a California law requiring educators to keep parents in the dark about their children’s transition; it was simply unlawful for a school district to automatically require educators to out potentially trans children to their parents.
This is being hailed by freakish ghouls everywhere as a win for “parental rights,” an increasingly nonsensical phrase that here means “a parent’s right to harm their queer child.” When LGBTQ+ kids don’t tell their parents about their orientation or gender, there is usually a good reason for it. Believe it or not, children are not mindless lumps of clay to be abused in whatever way best pleases their parents. They are, in fact, sentient human beings worthy of mostly the same rights to privacy and autonomy that adults possess.
Trans kids have seriously elevated risks for psychological, physical and sexual abuse than their cisgender peers; are routinely rejected by their parents when coming out; and experience homelessness at alarming rates. Trans kids know whether or not it is safe for them to come out at home, and making the brave decision to lead happier lives by asking a trusted teacher to address them differently should not be vindictively punished by forcibly outing them to their parents.
This battle is being fought in California by Catholic parents represented by the Thomas More Society, a “religious rights” policy group who also despise the idea of women experiencing bodily autonomy and gay marriage. They describe the paused California law as “secretly [facilitating] … children’s social transition,” giving the game away right off the bat by making it clear that no level of transition could possibly be acceptable in their eyes, and thus that they believe trans people should be genocided, eradicated from the face of the earth. A very normal way to think about a group of marginalized people.
“The parents who assert a free exercise claim have sincere religious beliefs about sex and gender, and they feel a religious obligation to raise their children in accordance with those beliefs. California’s policies violate those beliefs,” wrote the unnamed majority in the Supreme Court’s shadow docket decree, as though we don’t know that the conservative Justices move in lockstep when it comes to obliterating trans people.
If nothing else, this Court owes it to a sovereign State to avoid throwing over its policies in a slapdash way, if the Court can provide normal procedures. And throwing over a State’s policy is what the Court does today,” Justice Elena Kagan wrote, representing the court’s three liberal Justices, who dissented.
Justice Kagan has the clearly correct opinion on this matter. The Supreme Court should not be issuing edicts against state law like gods delivering commandments from on high. It is well outside the purview of the court, and it stinks of inherent political bias, a recurring problem for this majority conservative Supreme Court.
Make no mistake: These policies bloody the hands of every Justice, lawmaker, lawyer, educator and parent who champions them. Trans children will suffer, and these monstrous bastards will be responsible. We can only hope they are held accountable for it someday.
Aly Gibbs (She/They) is a trans writer who reports on news important to the queer community.
