By Nate Raymond
(Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear a bid backed by a conservative Christian legal group to challenge a Maryland school district’s policy against informing parents if their children identify as transgender or gender -nonconforming.
The justices rejected an appeal by three parents with children attending public schools in the Washington suburb of Montgomery County, challenging a lower court’s ruling that they did not have the necessary legal standing to challenge the policy. The plaintiffs are represented by the Virginia-based National Legal Foundation.
The issue of transgender rights has become a flashpoint in America’s culture wars. As part of this, conservative litigants and parent groups have filed lawsuits in several U.S. jurisdictions challenging school policies that attempt to honor transgender students’ requests not to “out” them to their parents without their consent.
The policy in question, adopted by the Montgomery County Board of Education for the 2020-2021 school year, allowed schools to develop gender support plans for students to ensure they “feel comfortable expressing their gender identity.”
The policy directs school staff to help transgender and gender-nonconforming students create a plan that addresses their preferred pronouns, names and toilets, and prohibits staff from informing parents of these plans without the student’s consent.
The plaintiffs — one mother and two fathers — filed a lawsuit in 2020, arguing that the district’s policy violated their due process rights under the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution to govern the care of their children .
U.S. District Judge Paul Grimm dismissed the case in 2022, and a three-judge panel of the Richmond, Virginia-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the dismissal in a 2-1 vote in 2023, finding that while parents were “persuasive” about brought forward. arguments, they lacked the capacity to pursue their claims.
Judge A. Marvin Quattlebaum, writing for the 4th Circuit majority, cited the lack of allegations that these parents’ children are transgender; has problems with gender identity; or “gender support plans” that included determining what names, pronouns, and bathrooms they would use.
Quattlebaum, an appointee of Republican former President Donald Trump, said this meant prosecutors had failed to present facts showing the schools had information about their children that could be withheld from them.
That shortcoming made their opposition merely a “policy difference,” Quattlebaum said.
“And disagreements over policy should be directed at elected policymakers at the ballot box, not at unelected judges in the courthouse,” Quattlebaum wrote.
The parents had argued on appeal that the 4th Circuit ruling misinterpreted U.S. Supreme Court precedent on legal standing and conflicted with decisions by other federal appeals courts. The parents had also urged the judges to decide not only whether they could file a lawsuit, but also whether the school’s policy violated their basic parental rights, saying “this issue is not going away.”
“Moreover, this case presents a substantive issue that is roiling parents and school districts from Maine to California,” they wrote in their petition to the justices. “It is important for parents, their children and public schools that this problem is addressed and resolved now.”
The school district said its policies were intended to ensure its schools provide a safe and welcoming environment in which all students feel accepted. While the policy encourages parental involvement whenever possible, the district said it reflects the reality that in some cases students do not openly express their gender identity at home out of concern for their safety or acceptance.
(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Will Dunham)
