Must parents be told of child's gender transition? Supreme Court rejects case

WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court on Monday declined to weigh in on a school policy of not disclosing a student’s gender identity to parents if there are worries parents would not be supportive.

The court rejected an appeal from three parents who challenged a gender support plan adopted in Maryland’s largest school district in 2020.

That move by the court left in place a decision from the Virginia-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that the parents couldn’t sue the Montgomery County Public School system because they hadn’t shown they’d been harmed by the policy.

None of the parents said their children were transgender, struggling with gender identity or likely to question their biological gender.

Therefore, the divided 4th Circuit appeals panel said, while the parents make compelling arguments against the policy, their “remedy lies in the ballot box, not the jury box.”

The parents, who brought the challenge under pseudonyms, said the whole point of the school’s nondisclosure policy is parents may never know what’s being kept from them.

They argued students are being allowed to use different names at school and “to exhibit as other than their birth sex, all without consulting or even notifying parents.”

The issue is not just limited to one county in Maryland, the parents added, but is “roiling parents and school districts from Maine to California.”

If that’s true, attorneys for the school district countered, the Supreme Court should wait for a challenge from parents who can show a school denied them information about their own children.

“This is not that case,” the lawyers wrote.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Supreme Court rejects challenge to school rule on gender transitions