WASHINGTON, D.C. (LifeSiteNews) — The U.S. Supreme Court decided on Monday not to take up a challenge by Wisconsin parents to a guidance empowering school staff to withhold information about a child’s gender confusion from parents, with Republican-appointed Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch, and John Roberts joining the court’s liberals in deciding not to give the parents a chance at relief.
The Christian Post reports that the case concerns an “Administrative Guidance for Gender Identity Support” issued by the Eau Claire Area School District (ECASD) in 2021, which concerns the development of so-called “gender support plans” for potential issues over a gender-confused student’s use of sex-specific facilities and athletic programs as well as “social, medical, surgical, and/or legal processes.” The document allows for circumstances in which “parents are not involved” in the process if their children do not feel comfortable being “open” with them.
“Parents are not entitled to know their kids’ [purported gender] identities. That knowledge must be earned,” ECASD staff was instructed in a mandatory training session in 2022.
That year, a group of parents banded together as Parents Protecting Our Children to file a complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin, accusing the district of an “insidious invasion of parental rights” the “obvious purpose of which” was to “prevent parents from making critical decisions for their own minor children, from interfering with the school’s ideologically-driven activities, from caring for their children, or from freely practicing their religion.”
The court sided against the ECASD, as did the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which claimed that no parent had yet “experienced an actual or imminent injury attributable” to the guidance or policies created pursuant to it, prompting an appeal to the nation’s highest court.
In its Monday order list, however, the Supreme Court denied the petition, with only conservative Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito and Trump-appointed Justice Brett Kavanaugh voting to take up the case. Just one more vote would have been enough to accept the case.
Most justices declined to elaborate on their reasoning, but Alito wrote a dissenting opinion, to which Thomas signed on, warning that the case “presents a question of great and growing national importance.”
“Relying principally on our decision in Clapper v. Amnesty Int’l USA, 568 U. S. 398 (2013), the Seventh Circuit suggested that a parent could not challenge the district’s policy unless the parent could show that his or her child is transitioning or considering a transition,” Alito wrote. “But the challenged policy and associated equity training specifically encourage school personnel to keep parents in the dark about the ‘identities’ of their children, especially if the school believes that the parents would not support what the school thinks is appropriate. Thus, the parents’ fear that the school district might make decisions for their children without their knowledge and consent is not ‘speculative’ […] They are merely taking the school district at its word.”
“I would grant the petition so that we can address this questionable understanding of Clapper and related standing decisions,” he added. “I am concerned that some federal courts are succumbing to the temptation to use the doctrine of Article III standing as a way of avoiding some particularly contentious constitutional questions. While it is important that federal courts heed the limits of their constitutional authority, it is equally important that they carry out their ‘virtually unflagging obligation . . . to exercise the jurisdiction given them.’”
The decision is the latest example of the Supreme Court being far from a consistent ally of pro-family goals, despite six of its nine current members having been appointed by Republican presidents.
The Court has delivered conservatives major victories on gun rights, environmental regulation, affirmative action, and, most significantly, abortion with the overturn of Roe v. Wade, but it has also issued dismissive rulings on COVID-19 shot mandates, religious freedom, and LGBT ideology to the point that Alito has taken the rare step of criticizing Barrett and Kavanaugh for lacking the “fortitude” to resolve such issues.
Observers tentatively expect the Court to side with states against the Biden administration in a current case over whether states can prohibit “gender transition” procedures on minors. Yet Barrett raised eyebrows by referring to a gender-confused female attorney as “mister” during oral arguments.