March 2, 2026 / 7:41 PM EST / AP
The Supreme Court on Monday allowed California schools to notify parents if their children identify as transgender without the student’s consent, granting an emergency appeal from a conservative legal group.
The order temporarily blocks a state law that prohibited automatic parental-notification requirements when students change pronouns or gender expression at school. The law and related school policies were designed to prevent schools from outing students to their families without consent.
Two sets of Catholic parents, represented by the Thomas More Society, sued, saying the policies led schools to mislead them and to secretly facilitate their children’s social transitions over the parents’ objections. California officials defended the rules as protecting students’ privacy, particularly for those who might face rejection at home, and said policies attempt to balance student privacy with parental rights.
The high court sided with the parents, reinstating a lower-court injunction that blocks the law and the policies while litigation continues.
The decision follows a string of recent Supreme Court rulings favoring religious plaintiffs, including rulings allowing parents to remove children from public-school lessons they object to that involve LGBTQ+ characters. The court earlier this term upheld state bans on gender-identity–related health care for minors and has signaled receptiveness to permitting states to bar transgender athletes from girls’ sports teams.
School policies for transgender students have drawn the court’s attention in other cases as well. In December the justices rebuffed a similar challenge from Wisconsin, though three conservative justices said they would have heard the case and Justice Samuel Alito described the issue as “of great and growing national importance.”
The Trump administration has also weighed in, finding in January that California’s policies violated parents’ right to access education records and suing over the state’s transgender athlete rules as a potential civil-rights violation.