The United States Supreme Court delivered a ruling Monday that blocked California from allowing public schools to conceal students’ gender transitions from their parents.
The decision came in the case Mirabelli v. Bonta, named after plaintiff parents and California Attorney General Rob Bonta, who defended the state’s policies.
The court ruled 6-3 in favor of the parents.
The opinion, issued without a named author in what is known as a per curiam ruling, determined that parents who sought religious exemptions are “likely to succeed on the merits of their Free Exercise Clause claim.”
The case was brought by four California parents and four teachers, represented by the Thomas More Society, a Chicago-based conservative Catholic legal organization.
The plaintiffs argued that California’s policies required schools to conceal children’s transgender status from their own parents.
One set of parents stated they were not informed that their junior-high daughter was being treated as male at school for nearly a full year.
Another set of parents said their daughter’s teachers actively misled them about how she was being addressed at school.
The court’s majority held that the policies “substantially interfere” with the “right of parents to guide the religious development of their children.”
The justices described California’s actions as “unconsented facilitation of a child’s gender transition.”
The majority drew a direct comparison to the court’s 2025 ruling in Mahmoud v. Taylor, which sided with religious parents seeking to opt their children out of LGBTQ storybook lessons in class.
The court wrote that the intrusion on parental free exercise rights in the California case was greater than what was at issue in Mahmoud.
Beyond the religious liberty question, the court also addressed parental rights under the due process clause.
The justices wrote that under long-established precedent, parents — not the state — hold primary authority over “the upbringing and education of children.”
The court declared that this precedent includes “the right not to be shut out of participation in decisions regarding their children’s mental health.”
The majority further stated that gender dysphoria “has an important bearing on a child’s mental health.”
California’s policies, the court said, conceal symptoms of gender dysphoria from parents and facilitate gender transitioning during school hours.
The justices concluded those policies “likely violate parents’ rights to direct the upbringing and education of their children.”
In 2024, California became the first state in the nation to prohibit school districts from requiring staff members to notify parents when a student changes their gender identity at school.
The law, known as AB 1955, bars schools from requiring employees to inform parents, though it does not explicitly forbid them from doing so.
Thomas More Society attorney Paul Jonna called the decision “the most significant parental rights ruling in a generation.”
Jonna stated that the ruling “told California and every state in the nation in no uncertain terms: you cannot secretly transition a child behind a parent’s back.”
