Supreme Court Blocks California Anti-Forced Outing Law
Ruling blocks enforcement of a law barring teachers from outing transgender students to parents without consent.
The U.S. Supreme Court granted an emergency appeal from a conservative legal group, blocking enforcement of a California law that prohibits teachers and school staff from outing transgender or gender-nonconforming students to their parents.
Under the state’s anti-“forced outing” law, teachers are barred from notifying parents without a student’s permission when that student asks to change their pronouns or gender expression at school.
The plaintiffs include religious parents and educators, among them two sets of Catholic parents represented by the Thomas More Society, who claim the prohibition on parental notification misled parents and helped facilitate their children’s social transition in defiance of their religious beliefs.
California officials argued that students have a right to privacy regarding their gender expression, especially if they fear rejection from their families, and that the law barring forced outing attempts to balance those concerns with parents’ rights.
But the high court’s conservative majority sided with the parents, reversing a 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision and reinstating a lower court order blocking state and school officials from enforcing the law while the challenge proceeds through the legal process.
“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,” the court’s conservative majority wrote in an unsigned order.
Conservative Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas noted that they would have gone further and granted the teachers’ appeal to lift any restrictions on them.
The court’s three liberal justices dissented, saying the case is still working its way through the lower courts and there was no need for the high court to intervene at this stage.
“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 in her dissent.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom defended the law, saying teachers should be focused on teaching instead of acting as “gender cops.”
The court’s order “undermines student privacy and the ability to learn in a safe and supportive classroom, free from discrimination based on gender identity,” Marissa Saldivar, a spokesperson for Newsom, told The Associated Press.
Equality California, the nation’s largest state-level LGBTQ advocacy organization, blasted the court’s conservative majority for granting the emergency appeal before the case could be argued on its merits.
“By stepping in on an emergency basis, the Court has effectively upended California’s student privacy protections without hearing full arguments and before the judicial process has run its course,” Equality California Executive Director Tony Hoang said in a statement. “This move reflects a dangerous willingness to short-circuit the established judicial process to dismantle protections for transgender youth.”
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