The Supreme Court declined Monday to consider a case challenging a Maryland school district policy that hides information from parents about their child’s “gender identity.”
Under the Montgomery County Board of Education’s guidelines, parents deemed “unsupportive” will not be told if their child is undergoing a “gender transition” at school, according to court filings. The justices declined to hear an appeal by three parents who challenged the plan, leaving in place a lower court ruling that found they did not have standing to challenge the policy.
The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last August that the parents did not have standing because their own children were not undergoing or considering a gender transition.
“Absent an injury that creates standing, federal courts lack the power to address the parents’ objections to the Guidelines,” the majority held. “That does not mean their objections are invalid.”
Judge Paul Niemeyer, an appointee of President George H.W. Bush, wrote in a dissent that the majority’s decision was “unnecessarily subjecting the Parents by default to a mandatory policy that pulls the discussion of gender issues from the family circle to the public schools without any avenue of redress by the Parents,” adding:
The majority’s conclusion is, in the circumstances of this case, an unfortunate abdication of judicial duty with respect to a very important constitutional issue that is directly harming and will likely continue to harm the Parents in this case by usurping their constitutionally protected role.
The parents told the Supreme Court in their November petition that the issue was “not going away.”
“Schools across the country over the past few years have adopted policies similar to that involved here that require school personnel to hide from parents—lying, if need be—that the school is assisting their child to transition gender at school,” they wrote.
Originally published by the Daily Caller News Foundation
