Court Battles

Supreme Court stays out of parental rights case

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by Zach Schonfeld - 04/20/26 11:09 AM ET

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by Zach Schonfeld - 04/20/26 11:09 AM ET

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The Supreme Court on Monday declined to take up an appeal from Massachusetts parents who contended the Constitution requires school employees to get their consent to encourage their child’s pronoun and name change in the classroom.

The parents argued the district was violating their fundamental right to direct the upbringing of their child, protected by the 14th Amendment’s due process guarantee.

It comes after the court turned away a similar case last December involving a Wisconsin school district.

Though the court stayed away again, several conservative justices have expressed interest in the issue. And it comes on the heels of the court’s emergency ruling last month that California was likely violating parents’ constitutional rights in another case implicating transgender students and their parents.

Disputes in other states could soon bring the issue back to the justices.

“Today’s denial by the Supreme Court is a missed opportunity to defend parental rights,” Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) Chief Counsel Jim Campbell said in a statement.

The conservative Christian legal group represented the Massachusetts parents. ADF has regularly successfully petitioned the high court to take up major cases involving religious rights and LGBTQ protections.

“No school district should make important mental health decisions on behalf of parents and conceal those decisions from them, especially in opposition to the mental-health care that those parents have chosen for their children,” Campbell said. “Our clients have a right to know what is happening to their children so they can make the best decisions for them.”

The challenge stems from Ludlow, Mass., where parents of a middle school student sued the school district for steps that staff took to encourage their child in identifying as “genderqueer.”

The school district pushed back that the protocol doesn’t actually exist. It told the justices that the case isn’t an appropriate vehicle, even if they want to rule on the broader parental rights issue.

“The Court should deny the petition here because it has been asked to render an advisory opinion on a policy that does not exist,” the school district wrote in court filings.

The Hill has reached out to the Ludlow School Committee’s attorney for comment.

The parents’ challenge was supported by outside briefs from former Vice President Pence’s group, Advancing American Freedom, and roughly 20 Republican state attorneys general.

The Supreme Court’s decision to turn away the case came as the justices agreed to hear a major religious rights dispute involving LGBTQ families. The justices will hear a group of Catholic preschools’ challenge to Colorado’s mandate that they admit children of same-sex couples to receive state funding.

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