The Supreme Court on Monday declined to rule on a Maryland public school district’s transgender policy that was brought by three anonymous parents of children who attend schools there.
In their court papers submitted with the high court, three parents said they have children who go to public schools in Montgomery County, Maryland, located near Washington, asking the justices to review a policy for transgender students. In 2020, the county’s public school board came up with guidelines known as the “Parental Preclusion Policy,” which includes keeping certain information about their children away from parents who don’t support their children’s gender transition.
A lawyer for the parents, Frederick W. Claybrook Jr., told The Epoch Times via email on Monday that he’s disappointed in the Supreme Court’s move not to intervene on their behalf.
“We are disappointed that the Supreme Court has decided not to consider this important case. Policies like those of Montgomery County Public Schools target parents to prevent them from knowing that their children are transitioning at school,” he said. “Similar policies currently cover over 10,000,000 students across the country. We look forward to when the Supreme Court will confirm that such policies violate the rights of parents, the ones who best know their children and their needs.”
“Plaintiff parents have monitored and guided their minor children’s sexual development and instruction, and they desire to continue to do so according to their own assessment of their children’s bests interests, but they are being impeded by the Parental Preclusion Policy,” Mr. Claybrook wrote in court documents.
Attorneys noted that “similar cases dictate that these parents have standing due to their current injury,” according to the petition. “At the very least, this petition presents the important question of whether the rationale of Parents Involved applies to individual rights other than those protected by the Equal Protection Clause.”
“Unless they may sue now, they will be restricted to bringing suit after the fact when they discover information and actions that have been unconstitutionally kept from them, perhaps with distressing results for their child,” the petition added.
What Montgomery County Argued
Under the Parental Preclusion Policy, according to court papers submitted by Montgomery County lawyers to the high court, officials with the school are told to create a plan with the family of the student if the family supports it.But the school is also mandated to make sure that the student’s medical information is kept confidential and can’t be shared without their consent with anyone else, including their parents.
“As courts have recognized in cases weighing families’ privacy rights, students retain ’the right not to have intimate facts concerning one’s life disclosed without one’s consent,'” attorneys wrote for Montgomery County schools in a brief submitted to the Supreme Court.
Montgomery County attorneys also argued that the school policy doesn’t place any limits on how the parents can talk to their children on transgender matters, adding that they do not “restrict anything the parents may discuss with their children.”
A lower court rejected the parents’ complaint because the school did not create a plan under the Parental Preclusion Policy for their children. According to that court, the parents couldn’t provide evidence that the policy may be applied to their children in the future, noting their children do not identify as transgender or something similar.
Mr. Claybrook, however, wrote in the Supreme Court petition that the parents do have standing because they should be able to “assure the well-being of their minor children,” arguing that they could potentially be targeted under the school policy. “The time for this court to step in is now,” he also wrote.
The Supreme Court has not yet acted on several recent petitions that challenge laws issued by Tennessee and Kentucky that ban transgender medical procedures for minors after they were challenged by families in the two states as well as the Biden administration. It’s unclear if the justices will take up those cases before their term ends in June.
