Supreme Court Won’t Hear Case About “Parents’ Rights”
A Massachusetts case about parents’ “right” to know if their kids are socially transitioning at school has been shot down by SCOTUS.
by Aly Gibbs
The stench of Parental Rights™ is in the air.
This time, at least, it’s the malodor of Parental Rights™ being defeated in single combat and slinking away in well earned ignominy. Hey, have I ever mentioned Evan Urquhart pays me based on the complexity of individual words, and how unlikely your average person is to be able to define them? It’s a strange system of recompense, but we make it work, baby.
Okay! Right, sorry, the news: The Supreme Court has declined to hear a case regarding parents’ “right” to be told about their kids’ social transition in public schools.
Parents sued Baird Middle School in Ludlow, Massachusetts, for failing to notify them when their kid asked to go by a new name and different pronouns. They allege that the school violated their Fourteenth Amendment right to due process, typically applied by the Supreme Court in the same way that the Fifth Amendment’s due process clause is applied. In brief, both amendments guarantee that government officials must follow “procedural due process” when depriving citizens of certain rights. While the Fifth Amendment applies to the capital s State, i.e., the federal government, the Fourteenth Amendment applies to individual states, like Massachusetts.
The parents’ complaint was dismissed first in the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts, and then again in the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, both times for failing to allege any actual wrongdoing on the part of Baird Middle School. The District Court ruled, and the First Circuit upheld, that the school’s refusal to divulge social transition information to parents without the student’s consent was not a violation of their rights, as social transition is (as you might guess, by the name) not the same thing as medical transition. Withholding information about chosen names and pronouns does not, then, constitute withholding medical information.
Quick quiz for anybody else who’s in the know: Who do you think represented these parents in their brave quest to defend Parental Rights™? If you guessed the Southern Poverty Law Center-designated hate group Alliance Defending Freedom, you’re a winner! Well, you’ve won this quiz, anyway… I don’t know if any of us are winners in this particular contest.
“Today’s denial by the Supreme Court is a missed opportunity to defend parental rights,” said ADF Chief Counsel Jim Campbell in a statement. “No school district should make important mental health decisions on behalf of parents and conceal those decisions from them, especially in opposition to the mental-health care that those parents have chosen for their children. Our clients have a right to know what is happening to their children so they can make the best decisions for them.”
Jim is a hapless loser, of course, and he’s wrong here because Baird Middle School never made any decisions for the parents or their kid. Instead, the child made their own decisions, and the school respected their autonomy in choosing a name and pronouns that make them happiest, and shielded them from potential harm by accepting that the child likely knows best whether it is safe to be outed to their parents. The only Parental Rights™ being infringed upon here are the parents’ “rights” to abuse their children for being transgender, and you’ll have to forgive me if I don’t hold water for that particular legal defense.
Cases like this, regarding Parental Rights™, are happening all over. The Supreme Court declined to hear a similar case out of Wisconsin in December, and issued an emergency, unsigned opinion in a slightly less similar case in California back in March. Related disputes over Parental Rights™ in other states could ultimately pressure the Supreme Court to hear a case that settles the matter once and for all, and given the current anti-trans bent of the conservative Justices, that could be a very scary turn of events for trans kids who need support from their schools but fear being forcibly outed to parents they don’t trust.
As always, I’m hoping for the best for our kids.
