A new U.S. Supreme Court order siding with religious parents challenging California’s transgender student privacy policies signals an alarming expansion of religious privilege at the expense of LGBTQ+ students and public school protections.

In an emergency order issued earlier this week in Mirabelli v. Bonta, the court’s conservative majority vacated a lower court stay that had allowed California to enforce policies protecting transgender students from being forcibly “outed” to parents by public school employees without student consent. The order applies to the specific Christian parents challenging the policies and blocks the enforcement of protections for transgender students while the case continues in the lower courts. The ruling came through the Supreme Court’s “shadow docket,” meaning the justices intervened on an emergency basis without full briefing, oral arguments or a final decision from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

“This is another troubling example of the Supreme Court rushing to privilege religious objections while bypassing the normal judicial process,” says the Freedom From Religion Foundation Anne Nicol Gaylor Legal Fellow Kyle J. Steinberg. “The court is signaling that religious beliefs about gender identity may be used to override policies designed to protect vulnerable students.”

California’s policy generally allows students to control when and how their gender identity is disclosed, recognizing that involuntary disclosure can expose LGBTQ+ students to rejection, harassment or abuse. The state argues that forcing schools to disclose confidential information about gender identity could cause irreversible harm.
But the Supreme Court’s majority said the parents bringing the challenge, who cite religious beliefs about sex and gender, were likely to succeed in their claims that the policies burden their religious rights and interfere with their authority to direct their children’s upbringing.

Justice Elena Kagan, joined by the court’s other two liberal justices, sharply criticized the majority’s decision to intervene so early in the litigation. “The court is impatient: It already knows what it thinks, and insists on getting everything over quickly,” Kagan wrote in dissent, warning that the justices were effectively prejudging a complex constitutional dispute without the benefit of full consideration.

The order builds on the court’s recent decision in Mahmoud v. Taylor, which elevated religious objections in public-school contexts involving LGBTQ+-related materials. The new ruling suggests the court may continue expanding religious exemptions in cases targeting LGBTQ+ rights in education.

“The Constitution does not give parents a religious veto over school policies meant to protect students,” says FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor. “Public schools must serve all students, including youth who may not feel safe disclosing their identity at home.”

FFRF emphasizes that public schools have a responsibility to provide a safe learning environment for all students and to avoid privileging religious beliefs in ways that harm vulnerable populations.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a U.S.-based nonprofit dedicated to defending the constitutional principle of separation between state and church and educating the public on matters relating to nontheism. With about 42,000 members, FFRF is the largest association of freethinkers (atheists, agnostics and humanists) in North America. For more information, visit ffrf.org.

The post Supreme Court uses shadow docket to empower religious privilege appeared first on Freedom From Religion Foundation.