Supreme Court to review parents’ challenge to law regarding notification of gender transitions

The parents argue that their right to direct the upbringing of their children is in jeopardy. The state continues to defend the law.

The U.S. Supreme Court will hear a lawsuit from parents who are challenging a Washington state law that prevents youth shelters from immediately notifying parents when minors who run away from home are seeking gender transitions.

Under the law, adopted in 2023, shelters that house runaway youth cannot immediately tell parents when a child is “seeking or receiving” gender transition medical services. It allows the state to refer the child for “behavioral health services” but does not change parental consent laws generally required for hormone therapy or surgeries.

The law directs shelters to notify the Washington Department of Children, Youth, and Families when housing a runaway child who is seeking gender transition services and “offer services designed to resolve the conflict” between the child and the parents before the parents will be notified and before the department works toward family reunification.

The legal challenge comes from parents whose children exhibit gender dysphoria. Lower courts ruled the parents did not have standing to sue because their children are not currently in a youth shelter, but the Supreme Court has agreed to review that decision.

In the lawsuit, five sets of parents express concern their child may run away and seek gender transition services. The parents argue the law violates their 14th Amendment right to direct the upbringing of their children. The Supreme Court has affirmed this right as protected under the amendment for more than a century.

“This statute allows shelters and homes to keep children at locations without their parents’ knowledge and refer those children for health interventions without their parents’ knowledge or approval,” it states. “It does not require children to be returned on any particular timetable or under any particular conditions.”

It also argues that the law restricts some of the parents’ First Amendment rights to the free exercise of religion, including at least one set of parents who are practicing Catholics.

The original lawsuit cites the Catechism of the Catholic Church: “Those plaintiffs … adhere to the doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church when it teaches, ‘By creating the human being man and woman, God gives personal dignity to the one and the other. Each of them, man and woman, should acknowledge and accept his sexual identity’” (No. 2293).

The parents are joined in the lawsuit by two advocacy groups: International Partners for Ethical Care and Advocates Protecting Children.

A spokesman for International Partners for Ethical Care told EWTN News the organization is “heartened that the Supreme Court will finally hear a case that addresses the rights of all parents to protect their children from harmful medical interventions.”

“We hope this case will not be cast as a religious liberties issue but as a safeguarding issue for parents and children of any or no faith,” the spokesperson said. “Parents should not have to live in fear of the state taking custody of their children if they disagree with a deceptive ideology and dangerous treatments.”

Mike Faulk, deputy communications director for Washington Attorney General Nick Brown, told EWTN News the lower courts found that the families did not show how they were “likely to be injured by the law” and “we will be prepared to successfully defend it at the Supreme Court.”

“This law was passed to give runaway youth and their families access to reunification and behavioral health services,” he said. “The law makes clear that the Department of Children, Youth, and Families must make good faith attempts to contact families with a goal of reunification.”

The law has received opposition from the Washington Catholic Conference, which represents the bishops of the state’s three dioceses. It criticized the bill when it was being considered in a 2023 newsletter, saying the social teachings of the Catholic Church affirm “the family is the most central social institution, and it must be supported and strengthened.”

“[This bill] undermines families,” the statement added. “In line with the bishops’ legislative priorities to protect children and families and respect life, the [conference] opposes [the bill].”