Supreme Court Upholds Parental Rights

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By John Stonestreet, Crosswalk.com

Many are calling a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling one of the most important parental rights victories of the twenty-first Century. In an emergency ruling in Mirabelli v. Bonta, the Court blocked California schools from purposely keeping from parents when their kids identify as the opposite sex at school. According to plaintiffs, the legal practice of hiding social gender transition from parents has caused ongoing and irreparable harm to parental rights and children’s well-being, and it needed to be stopped immediately.

In one tragic case, an eighth-grade girl attempted suicide. Only when she was hospitalized did her parents learn from a doctor that she had been presenting and treated as a boy at school. These cases exist because, back in 2024, the California Department of Education issued guidance to public schools to classify a student’s expressed transgender status as private. Directions were given to schools to respect a student’s wish on whom to inform, meaning they could withhold this information from parents. As a result, parents in California were left in the dark if a school treated their child as a different gender, including using a child’s preferred names and pronouns, regardless of parents’ wishes. Teachers were also forced to comply with the deception of the children’s parents. Of course, we now know that teachers, counselors, and school officials often encouraged students to question their identity.

Defending the policy, California Attorney General Rob Bonta claimed, “For many students, the consequences of compelling the disclosure of confidential information about their gender identity would be irreversible.” Bonta must not be familiar with the work of Walt Heyer, the results of the Cass Review, the comprehensive studies published over the past two years by the Department of Health and Human Services, or the testimonies of the growing number of young people who have “detransitioned,” such as Chloe Cole—all of which document the devastating consequences of pursuing these so-called “sex changes.”

The New York Times also ignored all this research with this headline: “Supreme Court Sides with Religious Parents, Blocking California’s Trans Student Policy.” Of course, the Court’s decision was a victory for all parents, not just religious ones. And it affirmed the ruling of a lower federal court in California, which held that the Fourteenth Amendment’s “Due Process” clause says parents and not the state have “the primary authority with respect to the upbringing and education of children.”

With regards to “religious parents,” the high Court ruled parents have a religious right to raise children in accordance with their beliefs, including in areas involving sex and gender, citing the Free Exercise Clause.

Justices Amy Coney Barrett, John Roberts and Brett Kavanaugh also made this interesting joint statement: “When rights are unstated, how do judges know what they are? . . .. the Court has crafted a demanding test for recognizing unexpressed rights: They must be deeply rooted in this nation’s history and tradition” and “implicit in the concept of ordered liberty.’” While many Christians would have appreciated a defense of parental rights based on Scripture or even natural law, this statement established parental rights as a deep-seated right in our nation’s history that is worth protecting and preserving.

The worldview implications of this decision are massive. There are currently as many as 40 other cases on the same topic currently working through the federal courts. That the Supreme Court is being asked to make a final decision about what is obvious about human beings is sad, but we certainly want them to make the right decision.

Another interesting facet of this case was that the more progressive justices on the Court—Justices Kagan, Jackson, and Sotomayor—held dissenting, though not unanimous, views. Justices Kagan and Jackson seemed to agree with the majority that the parents were likely going to win the case in the end, but disagreed with the Court’s need for emergency action. Sotomayor’s absence from the other two liberal justices suggests she may disagree with their interpretation.

Deuteronomy 6 clearly describes the sacred responsibility parents have to teach their children the commands of God. The biblical authority parents have over their children is a sphere the state cannot, and should not, contravene. We can be grateful for a ruling that recognizes this and pray that similar decisions in the future push back on a worldview that denies the realities of God’s created order.

This Breakpoint was co-authored by Andrew Carico.

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John Stonestreet is President of the Colson Center for Christian Worldview, and radio host of BreakPoint, a daily national radio program providing thought-provoking commentaries on current events and life issues from a biblical worldview. John holds degrees from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (IL) and Bryan College (TN), and is the co-author of Making Sense of Your World: A Biblical Worldview.

The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of CrosswalkHeadlines.

BreakPoint is a program of the Colson Center for Christian Worldview. BreakPoint commentaries offer incisive content people can't find anywhere else; content that cuts through the fog of relativism and the news cycle with truth and compassion. Founded by Chuck Colson (1931 – 2012) in 1991 as a daily radio broadcast, BreakPoint provides a Christian perspective on today's news and trends. Today, you can get it in written and a variety of audio formats: on the web, the radio, or your favorite podcast app on the go.