Barrett v. Kagan: Key Takeaways From Supreme Court Ruling on ‘Transgender’ School Policies

The U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision in Mirabelli v. Bonta was an important victory for parents, ruling against California policies that required schools to hide information about a child’s sexual identity confusion.

The emergency ruling has implications for thousands of parents whose local schools implemented “Transgender Model Policies,” which radical activists helped create. Those policies forced educators to accept false “gender ideology” and directed them to affirm students’ “gender identities” — behind parents’ backs.

Mirabelli will affect the many similar cases already making their way through the courts and could open the floodgates to even more lawsuits from parents. It’s a significant turning point in the battle against schools indoctrinating students with “gender ideology.”

The decision reinstates the district court’s permanent injunction, protecting parental rights while the lawsuit plays out. It was not a decision on the merits of the case.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote an opinion supporting the per curiam ruling, which overturned a Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision that had stopped a lower court decision blocking California schools from continuing these harmful policies.

Justice Elena Kagan wrote an opposing dissent.

Here are some key arguments and quotes from the decision and the opinions by the two justices.

California Violated Parents’ Religious Freedom

Some parents had religious objections to schools withholding information about their child’s sexual identity confusion. These parents’ faith teaches that God created only two sexes, male and female, and children can’t change to a different “gender.”

Of course, this is also biological reality.

The Court highlighted two significant cases that affirm parents’ constitutional right to religious freedom over coercive state policies, Wisconsin v. Yoder (1972) and Mahmoud v. Taylor (2025).

The ruling said:

We conclude that the parents who seek religious exemptions are likely to succeed on the merits of their Free Exercise Clause claim. California’s policies likely trigger strict scrutiny under that provision because they substantially interfere with the “right of parents to guide the religious development of their children.”

The Mirabelli decision also pointed out that the Ninth Circuit ignored the recent Supreme Court ruling in Mahmoud v. Taylor, adding this comment:

The intrusion on parents’ free exercise rights here — unconsented facilitation of a child’s gender transition — is greater than the introduction of LGBTQ storybooks.

Justice Kagan argued that the First Amendment violation was irrelevant, arguing it only covered some California parents, not all. She said the legal doctrine of “substantive due process,” a doctrine developed from the Fourteenth Amendment, was the only legal basis for the right “to direct the upbringing and medical care of their children.”

“The Court made its free exercise ruling superfluous, because the due process ground protects every parent, whether or not religious,” Kagan wrote.

Which brings us to the second reason the Court ruled as it did in Mirabelli.

California Violated Parents’ Right to Raise Their Children

Parents also objected that school secrecy policies violated their Fourteenth Amendment right to due process. That amendment’s due process clause says, “nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.”

Not every human right is expressed or listed in the Constitution, but the Court, as Barrett explained, “has crafted a demanding test for recognizing unexpressed rights.”

She wrote,

When rights are unstated, how do judges know what they are?

The obvious risk is that judges will use their own values as a guide, thereby jeopardizing the People’s right to self-governance. To mitigate this risk, 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.”

The right to parent one’s child is one such right. It is not given to parents by the state but is a natural, fundamental right which good governance recognizes and protects.

Mirabelli cited two longstanding Supreme Court decisions that acknowledge parental rights, Pierce v. Society of Sisters, from 1925, and Meyer v. Nebraska, from 1923. These hundred-year-old cases ruled that parents have the fundamental right to provide for the care, nurturing and moral and religious upbringing of their children.

The Pierce decision famously declared:

The child is not the mere creature of the State; those who nurture him and direct his destiny have the right, coupled with the high duty, to recognize and prepare him for additional obligations.

Mirabelli said that parents who object to schools hiding information about their children’s mental health would likely win:

The right protected by these precedents includes the right not to be shut out of participation in decisions regarding their children’s mental health.

Even Justice Kagan, who dissented from the decision, seemed to agree that parents might win on constitutional grounds:

None of this is to say that the Court gets the merits here wrong. … I have no doubt that parents have rights, even though unenumerated, concerning their children and the life choices they make.

She added that states have an interest “in the care and education of children,” but admitted that California’s regulations “could have crossed the constitutional line.”

But The Court Moved Too Quickly …

Kagan complained that the Court was acting hastily on a case that “so cries out for reflection and explanation.” She said the majority decision showed how the Court’s “emergency docket can malfunction,” adding:

The ordinary appellate process has barely started; only a district court has ruled on the case’s merits. The Court receives scant and, frankly, inadequate briefing about the legal issues in dispute.

The justice said Mirabelli should have gone all the way through the years-long judicial process before arriving at the Court for oral arguments and deliberations, “as procedures dictate.”

Kagan added that, in ruling on Mirabelli, the Court ignored almost 40 other cases raising similar issues:

The Court resolves the issues raised through shortcut procedures on the emergency docket even though it has had — for months now — the option of doing so the regular way, on our merits docket.

The justice referenced Foote v. Ludlow School Committee, a Massachusetts case from 2022, where parents say the local school “transitioned” their 11-year-old daughter against their express wishes.

Foote has been brought up at the justice’s conference meeting nine times since November 2025, including an upcoming conference on March 6, where the Court could still decide to take up the case.

The Daily Citizen, too, would like the Court to give a full hearing to a similar case — or combine several cases together — where parents’ rights have been so outrageously harmed by a school’s transgender secrecy policy.

Allowing California Policies to Continue Causes Irreparable Harm

Justice Barrett responded to Kagan’s argument against the emergency decision, saying that parents would be harmed if schools continued to exclude them from issues that affect children’s health and well-being:

Granting interim relief is not a sign of the Court’s “impatience” to reach the merits. Instead, the grant reflects the Court’s judgment about the risk of irreparable harm to the parents. …

Under California’s policy, parents will be excluded — perhaps for years — from participating in consequential decisions about their child’s mental health and wellbeing. Thus, the parents are likely to suffer irreparable harm if California enforces its policy while this litigation winds its way through the courts.

The Court recognized that parents’ rights were abrogated by California school policies, saying the continued denial of constitutional rights “during the potentially protracted appellate process constitutes irreparable harm.”

Parents are harmed when schools work to transition children, especially without their consent. But children are harmed, too, when schools inculcate them into false ideologies and move them toward a lifetime of costly and debilitating medical procedures.

We are thankful for the Court’s ruling in Mirabelli, and we hope other families will see justice done as they push back against gender dogma.

Related articles and resources:

Read Mirabelli v. Bonta

BREAKING: Judge Issues Preliminary Injunction Says California School District Cannot Force Teachers to Lie to Parents About Their Children’s ‘Gender Identity’

California Teachers Told to Hide Information About Students’ ‘Gender’ From Parents – They’re Suing

California Schools May Not Hide Students’ ‘Gender Identity’ From Parents

‘Equipping Parents For Back-To-School’ – Updated Resource Empowers Parents

Exclusive Interview: Colorado Parents Expose ‘Gender Cult’ at Public School in New Documentary

Florida Parents Sue School for Helping Teen ‘Transition’ – Without Their Knowledge or Consent

Homosexuality Resources

Montgomery County Must Pay $1.5 Million to Religious Parents After Supreme Court Ruling

Supreme Court Affirms Parents’ Rights Over California’s ‘Transgender’ School Policies