Listen to the article
This audio is auto-generated. Please let us know if you have feedback.
Dive Brief:
- The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday sided with parents who objected to California state policies that prevent schools from sharing students’ LGBTQ+ identities with their parents. The decision in Mirabelli v. Bonta came without oral arguments as part of the court’s shadow, or emergency, docket.
- The court, in an unsigned opinion, wrote that the policies “cut out the primary protectors of children’s best interests: their parents.” In a dissenting opinion, Justice Elena Kagan said the case “shows, not for the first time, how our emergency docket can malfunction,” saying the court had “scant and, frankly, inadequate briefing about the legal issues in dispute.”
- Plaintiffs in the lawsuit also included teachers who said their rights to religious exercise and free speech were infringed upon by compelling them to withhold information from parents. However, the decision didn’t wade into teachers’ rights and only addressed those of the parents.
Dive Insight:
Though the decision only pauses California’s policies for the objecting parents while the underlying question of their constitutionality is resolved in the courts, it’s the latest twist in a larger national divide over whether schools should be required to reveal students’ LGBTQ+ identities to their parents or guardians.
The lawsuit was brought by parents and teachers in a state that has strongly backed students’ LGBTQ+ identity protections. The plaintiffs filed suit against the Escondido Union School District and the California State Board of Education in 2023 on the grounds that such policies violate their First and 14th Amendment rights.
In 2024, California became the first state to prohibit school districts from outing LGBTQ+ students to their families and others without students’ consent.
Then, in late December 2025, a U.S. district court ruling in Mirabelli v. Olson — which later expanded into Mirabelli v. Bonta — barred district policies statewide that prevent teachers from informing parents about students’ gender expression without student consent.
However, California immediately appealed the decision to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which overturned the block and allowed the protections for transgender and nonbinary students to stand.
The plaintiffs then appealed the case to the high court in January in an emergency request.
The court’s per curiam opinion said the parents are likely to succeed on their arguments that the California policies violate their right to free exercise of religion under the First Amendment.
Monday’s Supreme Court’s decision in favor of the parents heavily relied on their June 2025 ruling in Mahmoud v. Taylor that gave parents the right to opt their children out of LGBTQ+-inclusive curriculum materials under certain circumstances. That case resulted in a $1.5 million settlement with Maryland’s largest school district last month.
“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,” the high court’s opinion in Mirabelli said. “Indeed, the intrusion on parents’ free exercise rights here — unconsented facilitation of a child’s gender transition — is greater than the introduction of LGBTQ storybooks we considered sufficient to trigger strict scrutiny in Mahmoud.”
Supporters of California’s historic policies say they protect students’ safety, which could be at risk in some situations involving abusive parents.
“The court’s decision today is a direct attack on the safety of LGBTQ+ and especially transgender students,” the California Federation of Teachers said in a statement Monday evening. “Forcing school employees to out students breaks the trust and safety students expect and need from us, and can even put students’ lives at risk.”
The Supreme Court, however, said the state’s policy could allow religious exemptions while preventing gender-identity disclosure to parents who would engage in abuse.
“This is a watershed moment for parental rights in America,” said Paul Jonna, special counsel at Thomas More Society, which filed the lawsuit, in a Monday statement. “The Supreme Court has told California and every state in the nation in no uncertain terms: you cannot secretly transition a child behind a parent’s back.”
The issue is a recent point of contention between the parental rights and LGBTQ+ rights movements, coming on the heels of other controversies roiling the nation’s schools, such as transgender students’ access to sports teams and facilities aligning with their gender identities.
Currently, at least six states require schools to disclose students’ LGBTQ+ identity to parents under some circumstances. Two other states require the disclosure only if parents ask for the information, according to the Movement Advancement Project.
The Mirabelli case is also the latest K-12 decision in recent years decided through the high court’s shadow docket.
In the past year alone, the Supreme Court has weighed in on at least three other K-12 cases in its emergency docket. Two related to the Trump administration’s winding down of the Education Department, and a third denied South Carolina’s emergency request to rule on a transgender student bathroom access case.
The shadow docket consists of cases for which the court has granted immediate review, and they are decided without oral arguments.
In her dissent in Mirabelli, Kagan, joined by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, criticized the decision to rule on a case “raising novel legal questions and arousing strong views” without oral arguments or deliberation in conference as for cases decided the usual way.
“It considers the request on a short fuse — a matter of weeks,” Kagan wrote. “The Court is impatient: It already knows what it thinks, and insists on getting everything over quickly.”
A request to hear a similar case, Foote v. Ludlow School Comm., has been pending on the high court’s regular docket for months, with justices last convening on March 2 over whether to take the case. According to Kagan, almost 40 similar cases are working their way through lower courts now.
While the Supreme Court paused California’s policies, the underlying case debating their constitutionality will return to the 9th Circuit.
