Parents and teachers who oppose the state policies sued, claiming their parental, free speech and religious rights were violated.
The Supreme Court on Monday barred California from enforcing state rules that restrict when schools can notify parents about students who come out as transgender and requires teachers to use children’s preferred pronouns.
The court, on a 6-3 vote on ideological lines, allowed a federal judge’s ruling in favor of parents who oppose the policy on religious grounds to go into effect. The San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had put the judge’s decision on hold pending further litigation.
The court’s ruling focused on the parents’ claim that their rights under the free exercise clause of the Constitution’s First Amendment were violated. The court also said they have valid parental rights claims under the Constitution’s 14th Amendment.
How does blocking a law that forbids schools from telling parents information about their children violate the child’s first amendment rights?
See, that’s what makes SCOTUS’s argument so insidious. If the right to be notified is religious in nature, then the conflict with the child that doesn’t want to tell the parents also is religious in nature. In particular, the child asserts the freedom to be free from the parents’ religion.
If the decision were based on the free speech rights of the school, or on concern for the well-being of the child, I could have understood. But basing it on the religious rights of the parents is in direct contradiction with the fact that the child clearly doesn’t want their parents to know, which means the child is aware the parents would disapprove for religious reasons, which means the child does not share that particular religious belief.
Did they say the right to be notified was religious in nature? Is this even about a “right to be notified”?
It looks like this is simply allows faculty to inform parents of their child’s transgender status, not requiring them to do it.
From the post body:
So, yes, it is a religious issue. And I would have totally bought a framing that says the law infringes on the teachers’ rights or those of staff to notify the parents. I don’t know why they would frame it as the parents’ right. I suppose it’s because they couldn’t find school personnel willing to go to court over this.
I totally get your point, and you are right. But the court went out of its way to frame is as the parents’ right based on exercise of religion, which seems bonkers to me.
I suppose the post body might be wrong, too.