California’s attempt to protect the privacy of transgender students’ decisions in public schools has been left in limbo after the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a state law aimed at shielding such information is likely unconstitutional.
Following a legal challenge, the U.S. Supreme Court had already kept the law on hold on a temporary basis and sent the matter back to the appellate court for further consideration. On Thursday, the 9th Circuit reaffirmed that suspension, ruling that California is barred from enforcing the policy while the court case over its legality remains unresolved.
Enacted in 2024, California’s Assembly Bill 1955 was designed to stop school staff from informing parents about a student’s gender identity or expression without the student’s permission. Supporters argue the law is meant to protect transgender and nonbinary students from being forcibly disclosed to families that may not be accepting.
However, critics contend that the policy effectively prevents schools from being fully transparent with parents, arguing that it excludes them from important conversations and decisions involving their children.
Earlier, the 9th Circuit had kept the law in place while California challenged a ruling from a federal district court in Santa Ana that blocked its enforcement.
According to legal experts, the appellate court’s latest ruling appears to expand the concept of “parental rights,” a move they say may have broad implications for families across the United States, including the estimated 72.5 million children who are not transgender.
According to Mary Ziegler, a professor at the UC Davis School of Law and specialist in American parental rights law, the ruling goes “arguably significantly more extensive than the Supreme Court has spelled out.”
“Trans issues are hot-button issues … but this kind of parental rights litigation has much broader ambitions, some of which have nothing to do with LGBTQ people,” she said. “There’s an ambition to transform parental rights period, and the easiest way to do that is to focus on trans issues.”
Citing in detail from a related Supreme Court ruling in March, the 9th Circuit panel determined that parents possess “an affirmative constitutional right” to be informed when their children change names or pronouns, adjust their clothing, or otherwise modify their gender expression while at school.
The appellate panel stated that it was not presented with any evidence suggesting that the California families involved in the lawsuit were “unfit parents” or that they posed a risk of abuse if informed about their children showing signs of gender dysphoria.
Conservative figures, among them Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett, have taken issue with the California law, arguing that it intrudes into private family matters.
In her concurrence to the Supreme Court’s March ruling, Justice Amy Coney Barrett warned that California’s policy could shut parents out of significant decisions regarding their children’s mental health and overall well-being for extended periods. She added that such exclusion could cause lasting harm if the state is allowed to enforce the measure while the legal challenge continues.
The court’s liberal-leaning justices, however, opposed that view, arguing that the ruling came too early in the legal process.
“I have no doubt that parents have rights, even though unenumerated, concerning their children and the life choices they make,” Justice Elena Kagan wrote in her dissent. “California’s policy, in depriving all parents of information critical to their children’s health and well-being, could have crossed the constitutional line.”
Several comparable cases are now working their way toward the Supreme Court, each contesting state or local rules that restrict schools from sharing information about students’ gender identity or expression with their parents. Many of these lawsuits — including the two California cases — are being backed by conservative legal groups that frame them as efforts to defend parental rights.
America First Legal, an advocacy group co-founded by senior White House adviser Stephen Miller and involved in the case, described Thursday’s 9th Circuit decision as a “major victory.”
The Supreme Court’s ruling stemmed from a lawsuit filed on behalf of two California teachers by the Thomas More Society, a conservative public interest law firm named after the 16th-century Catholic saint.
Ziegler and other legal scholars cautioned that a forthcoming ruling could have wide-reaching consequences across the justice system, potentially influencing how courts handle a range of issues—from school vaccination requirements to cases involving parental discipline and when child protective services should step in.
“Reasonable people can disagree about what involvement parents should or shouldn’t have in this context,” Ziegler said of the California trans rights law. “But that’s not what this is about. It’s about this complete overhaul of the power parents have. And children are vanishing from the story.”
