Parents’ School Gender Transition Policy Suit Rejected by Court

Parents suing a school board over its guidelines allowing students to develop gender transition and support plans without parental knowledge didn’t have standing because they suffered no injuries, a federal appeals court held Monday.

The US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit said that the parents failed to show any injury since they did not claim their children are transgender, transitioning, considering transitioning, struggling with gender identity issues, or are at heightened risk for questioning their biological gender.

Gender identity guidelines adopted by the Montgomery County Board of Education in 2020-2021 allowed schools to develop gender support plans with students without notifying parents if the school deemed the family as unsupportive. The parents claimed the policy violated their Fourteenth Amendment right to raise their children.

In affirming the suit’s dismissal, the court said the parents’ “policy disagreements should be addressed to elected policymakers at the ballot box, not to unelected judges in the courthouse.”

The parents “have not alleged any of their children have gender support plans” or discussed transitioning at school, Judge A. Marvin Quattlebaum wrote. “The parents effectively concede a lack of current injury by arguing they should be able to challenge the policy before they are injured.”

Judge Allison Jones Rushing joined the majority opinion.

Judge Paul V. Niemeyer dissented saying the majority characterized the parents’ allegations in an “unfairly narrow way” and that the parents weren’t just challenging the provisions about not informing parents, but rather the whole policy. Since the guidelines directed at all students, the parents in this suit have personal stakes in the issue, Niemeyer said.

“The injury here is not merely threatened but is also ongoing because the Parents are deliberately being excluded from the discussion about gender and gender transition,” Niemeyer said.

But the majority opinion rejected Niemeyer’s framing of the parents’ allegations as a “lack of access to information about their children.”

Though the guidelines are mandatory and applicable to all students, that “does not mean a particular plaintiff has been injured and has standing to challenge it,” the majority opinion said.

“The parents must show a substantial risk that they will be injured by the school’s policy of nondisclosure—not merely that it applies to their children in the abstract,” Quattlebaum said.

The parents were represented by Claybrook LLC and the National Legal Foundation.

The school board was represented by WilmerHale LLP.

The case is Parents 1 v. Montgomery Cnty. Bd. of Educ., 4th Cir., No. 22-02034, 8/14/23.