The Supreme Court signaled that California parents challenging school secrecy policies are likely to win, a major development in the fight over whether families or the state hold primary authority over a child’s upbringing and mental health.
This article is a lightly edited transcript of the “Here’s the Point” podcast by Ryan Helfenbein, executive director of the Standing for Freedom Center.
On March 2, the Supreme Court issued a 6-3 per curiam opinion in Mirabelli v. Bonta, partially vacating a Ninth Circuit stay and reinstating a lower court injunction protecting parents in California’s public schools.
This is not yet a final ruling on the merits. The case is still working through the courts. But six justices of the Supreme Court have signaled that they agree that parents are likely to succeed on their constitutional claims.
The case originated in 2023 when California teachers Elizabeth Mirabelli and Lori Ann West sued after their school district denied them religious accommodations to its gender identity policies. The policies required teachers to conceal a student’s gender transition from parents without the child’s consent.
Parents who later joined the lawsuit told devastating stories. One couple, identified in court filings as the Poes, was never told their seventh-grade daughter had begun transitioning to becoming a male at school. They only found out after her suicide attempt in the eighth grade. By ninth grade, despite their pleas, the school continued using male pronouns. California’s position was that parental disclosure puts students at risk.
The actual record showed something different, and this is important: No studies demonstrated harm to children from notifying fit parents. And experts on both sides of this case acknowledged that secrecy risks rupturing the family bond entirely. But that may be entirely the point of all of this secrecy in the first place.
In December 2025, U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez granted summary judgment for the plaintiffs, declaring the policies unconstitutional and issuing a statewide injunction. California appealed. The Ninth Circuit stayed the injunction. And now the Supreme Court has stepped in and reinstated protections for parents and told the nation where this is almost certainly headed.
So how should we think about this?
First, the Supreme Court sent an unmistakable signal: Parental rights should be constitutionally protected.
California crossed the line, but they aren’t the only ones. The Court’s per curiam opinion is carefully worded as an interim measure, but its substance is a preview of the verdict. The six-justice majority concluded that parents are likely to succeed on both their free exercise and due process claims.
On due process, the Court cited numerous cases and over a century of precedent affirming that parents, not the state, hold primary authority over the upbringing and health of their children.
On free exercise, the majority leaned on last year’s landmark Mahmoud v. Taylor decision and Wisconsin v. Yoder to conclude that California’s policies substantially burden religious parents’ ability to raise their children according to their faith.
The opinion states plainly that California’s secrecy regime “cuts out primary protectors of children’s best interests: their parents.”
Second, California’s policy was always about advancing an ideology and never about protecting children.
The state argued that disclosing a student’s gender transition to parents could expose the child to abuse. It is a serious-sounding argument that immediately collapses under examination. The very experts California called in its own defense acknowledged that keeping this from parents significantly risks fracturing the family relationship.
The plaintiffs’ experts, including Dr. Erica Anderson, a self-proclaimed transgender clinician, testified that parental involvement consistently improves outcomes for children experiencing gender dysphoria. No studies in the record demonstrated harm from notifying loving parents.
What the parental exclusion policies did was something different entirely: They assumed every Christian, every traditional family, every parent who might not celebrate a gender transition was a threat to their own child. That is not child protection. That is state abuse of power, and it is religious discrimination. Ideological warfare waged against the family through the instrument of public education is now at an all-time high all across the country.
The Poe family’s story is not the exception — it is the point. A daughter in crisis. Parents kept in the dark. A school system more committed to a gender ideology agenda than to the well-being of a child. That is what “parental exclusion” looks like in practice.
Third, this is a win worth celebrating, but the battle is not over — and Christians must be engaged.
The Supreme Court’s action reinstates the injunction for parents. It does not yet protect teachers, whose claims remain stayed while the Ninth Circuit hears the appeal. The full merits of the case have not been decided. Similar battles are pending in Massachusetts and other states. The Ninth Circuit — the most reliably progressive federal appellate court in the country — will not likely surrender quietly.
But here is what we should understand: Six justices of the United States Supreme Court just looked at California’s policy of concealing a child’s gender dysphoria from parents and said it is almost certainly unconstitutional. Six justices said parents’ religious convictions about raising their children deserve protection from the state and that the harm being done to families right now is irreparable and cannot wait.
Proverbs 22:6 calls parents to train up a child in the way he or she should go. The state of California decided it had a better plan for parents, for teachers, and for children. And praise God that the Supreme Court just told California, actually you don’t have a better plan.
God has given parents the authority and the responsibility for the care of their children. That responsibility is one that almost every single civilization has recognized throughout the ages — across continents and across cultures. Progressive ideology has the audacity to fight God and the natural order. Not only will it fail, but it will fail spectacularly.
No policy based on false political ideology will ever overturn what God has woven into the fabric of a family. Male and female, made in the image of God, covenanted together before God in marriage, and children as the natural gift and blessing of their union cannot suddenly be circumvented by the state, no matter how much the state may try.
In the end, the truth will prevail, and the family God has created will ultimately prevail with the final Word and final authority. Because Christ is Lord over the state, He is Lord over the family, and His Lordship always prevails.
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